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Alice in La-La-Land by Robert Wright Campbell
Art Work by the Pasadena College of Art and Design
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
Aunt Crete's Emancipation by Grace Livingston Hill
Because a Little Bug Went Ka-Choo! by Rosetta Stone
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A Chance to See Egypt by Sandra Scofield
A Color Clown Comes to Town by Jane Belk Moncure
The Creature in the Teacher by Christopher Pike
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
Happy Birthday Frankie by Sarah Weeks
Little Cloud by Eric Carle
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
Minnie by Annie M.G. Schmidt
A Mother for Choco by Keiko Kasza
Numbers by DK Books
Owl at Home by Arnold Lobel
Rainbow Fish to the Rescue by Marcus Pfister
The Secret Three by Mildred Myrick
The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie
Shapes by DK Books
A Simple Monk by Alison Wright
Stargate by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich
The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore
Touch and Feel Baby Animals by DK Books
Viva Las Buffy by Scott Lobdell
The Walking Stones by Mollie Hunter

Miscellaneous:
Fill Her Up
A Full Night's Sleep
Happy Halloween
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On Holiday While Sleeping
Our Trip to the Peninsula
Playing the Same Games
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The Memory Keeper's Daughter: 10/12/06

Memory Keeper's Daughter

I signed up for a book ring of The Memory Keeper's Daughter last November as the story of a father keeping a huge family secret until his death was something I was using in that year's Nanowrimo novel. Now nearly a year later the book has reached me and it was well worth the wait.

Kim Edwards chose a very cliched set up for her story but the narration is told well enough to make the book a page turner. In the first chapter she uses:

  • A freak storm
  • An unexpected birth of twins
  • A father forced to deliver his own children
  • A twin whisked away to live a separate and secret life.

From this formulaic beginning, Edwards sets up two parallel but ordinary (mundane even) except that one mother has depression now to face and the distancing of her once close husband while the adoptive mother must learn how to raise a child with Down's syndrome and fight for her daughter's rights. It is the emotional evolution of these characters that makes the book interesting.

Here is my BookCrossing review:

The best intentions are not always the best ideas. A young father who had seen his childhood torn apart by the loss of his sister tries to save his wife and infant son from a similar fate when is wife gives birth to a daughter with Down's syndrome. Though he doesn't kill his daughter, he tells his wife that his daughter died at birth and keeps the secret of her life until his own death decades later.

While the set up of the births feels contrived the rest of the story crafted well enough and with such tenderness that the extraordinary circumstances at the beginning are soon forgotten and forgiven. The novel isn't so much about what the characters do in their separate lives but how they grow emotionally and how the burden of the secrets tears at the bonds of family.

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