before i read this story, i havenot though a secret would ruin a family,would make a thing millions of different. what a secret could brought a terrible result was beyond my imagine.i though everyone own their secrets those secret kept the other from hurting, or protect themself not to be hurt,those kinds of secrets are unharmful. yet, in this story a secret is the root of tragedy. i dont like this sort of story, i mean those stories with miserable ending, or those stories made the reader a sort of sufocate during the reading.i havenot finished the story but i force myself to write something about it, i am not hoping when the reading end the feeling slip away and left me a blank brain,just like nonthing happened.
at any rate, this is a fascinating novel.

This is one of those books that I know I was supposed to like. And I really wanted to like it...I really wanted to like it, but I just could not. Ms. Edwards is desperately in need of an editor. It would have been such a better read if I did not have to trudge through so many paragraphs...pages...to get to the point. Great idea...just poorly executed. ( )

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memorable book because the story is so unique. Strongly drawn characters. ( )

It takes a lot of hard work on an author’s part to get me interested in family drama; characters have to be spot on, the drama worth sitting through, the pathos balanced with distanced narration. It’s not my preferred genre of fiction, and I have trouble with virtually every other book written by Jodi Picoult, while finding the ones that are good absolutely gripping. Her recommendation on the front cover of Kim Edwards’ The Memory Keeper’s Daughter put me in two minds whether to pick it up at all. I’m very glad I did, because the theme of memory, of personal history, the way the secret sits and channels everything from there on was utterly fascinating and handled with finesse.

It’s moving, too… I can handle that when a writer is not simply trying to play my emotions like a toy banjo; the decision to remove the Down’s Syndrome twin from the family unit without the mother’s knowledge was a monstrous act of compassion and the reader is involved in every consequence as half a dozen or so lives play out around it.

About three quarters of the way though, it dragged a little and then did a little skip, as though the author had just realised she was getting a bit entrenched… the end more than redeemed this slight flaw; the simple good nature of Phoebe, quite content with her life, set against the troubled background of her existence is beautiful, and Edwards uses that to shine a light across what might otherwise have been the bleak landscape of a shattered family.

Even if the ‘misery-lit’ feel of the subject initially turns you off, this is a gem of a read. If you were, like me, to only rarely put aside your dislike of exploring family dysfunction and secrets, this is the book to do it for. And if you like that sort of thing anyway… this is how it should be done. ( )