The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

This book got many rave reviews when it came out. However, not one of these reviews struck me in a "I gotta read that" way. My friend Kristy picked it up in an airport-and not to say she wasn't interested, but I mean, it can be slim pickings out there.

Kristy lent it to me a month or more ago and although I have been slowly, but surely reading a few pages at a time, I haven't really picked up any momentum. Then, Michael and I went to Barnes and Noble the other night and you know what he told me?!?! "You can't buy any more books until you read the ten 'new' ones lying around the house". Now, the fact that I still bought 5, secretly, is neither here nor there. All I know is I finished this book this afternoon.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards is the story about a choice that changes the lives of at least 7 people in unimaginable ways. It very much made me think of the Butterfly Effect-the thought that every little action we take, every decision, effects every other person in the world. The idea is astounding.

However, the book doesn't have to go as far as the world to show you the effects such decisions can cause. In a moment, David Henry made a choice about his newborn daughter.

I am not going to go too much into the plot here. Most people probably know what this book is about. It's not that it isn't a good book. It's not that it isn't an interesting story. I just felt it was painfully slow. The story didn't move me. I wasn't sure I cared how it all turned out.

I'll admit-I certainly cried a few tears in the end. Strangely, at least to most people, it was tears for David Henry. If there is to be a "bad guy" in this book, it's him. He lied. He made the decision. He changed the lives. Everyone else got caught up in the aftermath. But in the end, I found him to be the most sympathetic character. The one I related to the most. Although, I am not sure what parts of him I related too. Maybe it's just he is human-painfully human. He never, ever meant to do the harm he did. But after that moment, nothing he ever would have done could fix it. Even if the very next day, if he told his wife he lied and that their daughter had lived-she would have never been able to love him again, knowing what his original intent had been.

In the end, he spent his whole life with a horrible secret. The rest of them-his children, his wife, they all got a chance to move on.

It's a good book. Just expect it to be slow. Actually, it is a great airplane book. You'll be forced to read it and one sitting and it will go down much better.