The Memory Keeper's Daughter, By Kim Edwards

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards, explains the burden of keeping secrets, parenthood, and marriage. When Norah Henry unexpectedly goes into labor, smack in the middle of a blizzard, her husband David is forced to deliver their child. David, who is an orthopedic surgeon, successfully delivers their son, but is caught off guard when there appears to be another baby coming. Immediately David recognizes signs of Down syndrome and instructs the nurse, Caroline, to take her away to an institution. Instead of being honest and telling his wife the truth, he tells her she was stillborn. The guilt and regret from sending his daughter away remains with David throughout the novel. Edwards, utilizes narrative perspective, point of view, …show more content…
The story is always told in third person, but it only comes from one character at a time. The focus of narration changes from David to Norah, Caroline, and even Paul, so the audience is introduced to many different character opinions and stories. Edwards does an exquisite job of writing in a way that taps into the mind of the characters and their feelings. Another key example of point of view, is the way Edwards shifts back and forth from David’s life with Paul to Caroline’s life with Phoebe. By making their lives parallel to one another, it gives the reader even more insight as to how the lie affects them individually. At one point David was wondering how Caroline’s life with Phoebe was and she said “you missed a lot of heartache, sure. But David, you missed a lot of Joy” (249). To that he responded “I know that… better than you think” (249). Those quotes are the perfect comparison between Caroline’s life with Phoebe, filled with joy and love, and David’s life filled with regret and “what …show more content…
In addition, the imagery is crucial to the development of characters’ points of view. “…the old house, now weather-beaten a soft gray, the roof sagging at the center of the ridgepole and some of the shingles missing. David stopped, taken so powerfully into the past that he expected to see them again: his mother coming down the steps with a galvanized tin tub… his sister sitting on the porch, and the sound of the ax striking logs from where his father chopped fire wood” (263). David, who was once ashamed and embarrassed of his past, so much so that he changed his last name from McAlister to Henry, returned to his hometown. He did not return to his hometown very often to begin with, but after his mother passed he never went back. The grief and burden of his terrible decision has caused him to search for comfort and peace, but his hometown could not even offer him that. “The place was as familiar as breath but as far from his life now as the moon” (263). That last quotation is one of the best examples of imagery in the novel; it paints a picture and drives home David’s true internal