Book Review - The Memory Keeper's Daughter

I was fully prepared not to like this book and even assumed I wouldn't finish it. Well, instead I couldn't put it down until I finished it. It didn't have a "happily ever after ending" by any means. I did find that the second half of the book felt rushed and some characters were not as well developed.


Here is the book recap from Amazon.com.
Kim Edwards’s stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mother’s silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes that one of them has Down Syndrome and makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and to keep her birth a secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is an astonishing tale of redemptive love. BACKCOVER: “Edwards is a born novelist. . . . Rich with psychological detail and the nuances of human connection.”
—Chicago Tribune 


Secrets, we all have them and keep them for others. They can make or break relationships.
the title comes from the name of a camera that Norah bought for David after their son was born. This begins David's obsession with photography. 


This book starts in 1964 when times were very different for women.
The theme running through it is a feminist one. At first Norah bows to everything David, her husband wants.

As she says at one point " because it is 1964 and he was her husband and she had always deferred to him completely". When Norah buys a travel agency and ultimately builds it into a successful business they fight about it.

 It is also about the struggle of groups seeking rights. Caroline, the nurse, is an ardent fighter for "her" daughter to attend regular school rather than an institutional one for "special" children.