Review: The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

I read this book quite a while ago, and here is the review. Keep in mind, I tend to review the author/editors as much as I review the book itself. It's a bit of a curse as a working editor.

I'll start by saying that while this is a great story, it is not a particularly good book. I'm surprised to find out this wasn't Kim Edwards' first novel. She writes as a novice would, with seemingly no proofreading or editing. She is repetitive and does way too much telling and not enough showing.

I marked several grammatical errors that I suppose I can't blame Edwards for, but if I were writing a novel and submitting it for publication I would do some proofreading myself. I did, however, catch plenty of gold flecks of imagery. Unfortunately, they were confined to single sentences ending paragraphs or chapters included for the purpose of producing an effect.

I cant say how many times she described the characters as "removed" like a "random spectator," "floating elsewhere, observing." I actually had to write "OK, we get it" in the margin by page 18 to feel better. Edwards also seemed not to know what emotions she wanted to portray. On page 94, she describes Caroline as "fierce, protective, touch[ing] [Phoebe's] cheek so gently." I had no idea a gentle touch could express such animal instincts.

She also should have done some research for facts she describes in her book. On page 111, one of her characters, a learned doctor, claims the crystals in a geode are created by water from ancient seas getting trapped inside. They're actually mineral deposits left behind. About halfway through the book, the story begins to improve and take root with more realistic and less predictable issues.

As a side note, Edwards seems to have trouble choosing good names. At one point, she actually names a character Miss Throckmorton. How distracting is that?

One does have to wonder if an average person would be as distraught as Norah is after so many years. After all, the baby "died" the same moment Norah learned of her existence. I don't mean to undermine the life of a child and a mother's love for it, but she never moves on. That moment dictates and ruins the rest of her life. Although I see how wrong what David did was, I can't help but consider Norah the "bad guy." After thinking about it once you're done reading the book, it's clear that they all share blame for the way their lives turned out. None of them can seem to let go of anything and they're all entirely self-centered. It may have been a result of their upbringing, at least for Norah and Paul. Paul may be blameless simply because it was the only way he saw his parents live.

Page 303- Is "citified" a word?

Some phrases that stood out to me:
Page 209- "Then the train was rushing between them; there was the roar and silence, roar and silence, of the passing cars. He glimpsed Duke in flashes, like photographs hanging in his father's darkroom, all those moments from his father's life like glimpses from a train. Trapped and caught. Rush and silence. Like this."
Page 338- "...above the sound of the river, the smell of its dark banks, the stars roaring everywhere, swirling, alive.

This story had so many missed chances, missed opportunities to talk and mend, missed moments to share with a loved one. It certainly makes me be wary of doing that myself. An interesting note: Phoebe's mind is the only main one we don't enter as a reader. Perhaps it served to keep us equal to the characters in what we know about her and her condition. The point seems to be that Phoebe represents the only thing the family had been missing in their lives- unconditional love.

I would buy this book from the sales pile or borrow from a friend.

The Dead Poets

I have just seen Dead Poet's Society for the first time. This means all the other English majors of the world had the permission to scoff at me on a whim up until last night. If you're interested in teaching, poetry, or acting, you should probably see this movie. Mr. Keating definitely brought back some fond memories for me.

The two greatest English teachers I have had each had a bit of Keating in them. One was in high school and the other in college. Mr. Ford (high school) was as romantic as Mr. Keating was. He saw the world through rose-colored glasses, without being blind to the darkness. Professor Shoaf (in college) had that interesting teaching style, seemingly obsessed with the way words of love could change (or distort) perception and vice-versa. People could distort love just as, or more, easily through the use of words. He taught me Chaucer and Shakespeare. I never loved Shakespeare until that class, and Chaucer took on so much more meaning than he ever had before. In high school, Chaucer was a bawdy poet making social commentary. With Shoaf, Chaucer was a bawdy genius who wrote multiple meanings into single words and paved the way for the future Shakespeares, and when read in Middle English, he was beautiful to boot. Although Shoaf didn't literally stand on tables to see the world in a different light, we basically learned the same concept. Ford was my introduction into the world of multiple meanings. It wasn't until then that I learned to look at each word in a poem more carefully than the poem as a whole. Shoaf brought that idea home and taught us how to use it.

I'll have to take my Chaucer and Shakespeare tomes out and bring myself back up to speed. Maybe I'll reconsider that Ph.D. and professorship in a decade or two.