Reviews for Hija de la memoria (Memory Keeper's Daughter)

The average rating for Hija de la memoria (Memory Keeper's Daughter) based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-03-23 00:00:00 David Anible Note: This review is chock full of spoilers! Read at your own risk. Ugh. This book was a disappointment. I was drawn in by the premise, my mother-in-law having borne twins where one was neurotypical and the other was not (cerebral palsy in our case). As I got into the story, though, its shortcomings became painfully apparent. The characters were shallow and unlikable. In particular I couldn't stand Norah, whose every hackneyed scene - from her flirtation with alcoholism to her tawdry affairs to her rebirth as a liberated entrepreneur - recalled the one Danielle Steele book I read out of desperation during a boring summer at my parents' house. So many times, the plot seemed to be building up to a climax which inevitably fell flat - son Paul's drugged-out ransacking of his father's workroom, for example, could've led to his discovering the file on his sister, but instead was resolved with no revelations, just a lame father-son chat and an admonition to clean up the mess - what was the point? As for David and his photography, the title "Memory Keeper" would've been more poignant if, say, David had kept his photography a private thing, albums filled with desperately orchestrated scenes of 'happy' family moments that never were; instead, the author chose another Steele-worthy plot of turning him into a detached, semi-pro photo artist with some high-concept obsession with linking anatomy with nature scenes. Whatever. The question of how David pulled off his daughter's faked death is also nagging. Even if he did sign the death certificate himself, how did he swing the service and burial? Should we assume that he simply nipped down to "Caskets-R-Us" for a wee box, informed everyone that he stuck her in there, and that no one blinked an eye? The closest thing to a sympathetic, realistic character was Caroline, the nurse who raised Phoebe. And speaking of Phoebe, the author seemed to care less about transcending Down Syndrome stereotypes and fleshing her out as a fully-realized character than for using her as a bland abstraction, a screen against which the other characters project their neuroses and complicated life choices. The author is very enamored of setting a scene, right down to the dust motes in the air and the color of people's shoes. She puts too much effort into description and not enough on weaving a compelling plot. Redundancy and trite dialogue are a constant annoyance. Oh, and the whole Rosemary plot at the end? What? David just happens to stumble upon some pregnant homeless chick in his abandoned childhood home who's about Phoebe's age, and after she takes him prisoner and he confesses his precious sins to her, he basically adopts her like a neurotypical stand-in for the broken daughter he gave away? Was that supposed to be some act of redemption - taking in a girl and her baby to atone for the baby he rejected? The whole thing reeks of symbolism, but did anyone else just find this twist not only implausible but creepy? Feh. I struggled to finish this book, but I wouldn't recommend anyone doing the same to themselves.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-04-24 00:00:00 Walt Walt This book was terrible, not because it was bad, but because it was so good: I couldn't put it down until I finished the final pages at 3 in the morning. Not a good thing, when your alarm goes off at 5:50 AM. What fascinates me about this book is what it has to say about "secrets." The basic premise: a doctor is forced to deliver his wife's child in the middle of a raging snowstorm. The only complication is that she's actually carrying twins - the first, a healthy beautiful baby boy; the second, a Downs Syndrome baby girl. The year is 1964, when such children are regularly institutionalized - after all, babies like this rarely survive long anyway, and even if they do, their quality of life is marginal at best. As a doctor, David Henry knows his daughters prognosis full well, and rather than force his young wife Norah to deal with such a tragedy, he makes a snap decision to try and protect her from a lifetime of unspeakable grief. His solution: hand the "defective" daughter to his nurse to deliver to an institution, while he informs his wife of the tragedy - she delivered twins, but her daughter did not survive childbirth. She is dead. Gone. With that simple little secret, the future is inescapably changed, his doom is sealed - unbeknownst to anyone, the nurse flees into hiding to raise the child as her own. The rest of the book is riveting, because we get to see firsthand the effects of his fall - on his relationship with his wife, his son, and eventually everyone else around him. It's a tragic book (I'm not sure I could read it again), because it's not Hollywood - it's brutally true to the lives that many of us have experienced ourselves. The one ray of hope comes unexpectedly, as David Henry confesses everything - no more secrets - to a young woman with child. In the silence David started talking again, trying to explain at first about the snow and the shock and the scalpel flashing in the harsh light. How he has stood outside himself and watched himself moving in the world. How he had woken up every morning of his life for eithteen years thinking maybe today, maybe this was the day he would put things right. But Phoebe was gone and he couldn't find her, so how could he possibly tell Norah? The secret had worked its way through their marriage, an insidious vine, twisting; she drank too much, and then she began having affairs, that sleazy realtor at the beach, and then the others; he's tried not to notice, to forgive her, for he knew that in some real sense the fault was his. Photo after photo, as if he could stop time or make an image powerful enough to obscure the moment when he had turned and handed his daughter to Caroline Gill. ... He had handed his daughter to Caroline Gill and that act had led him here, years later, to this girl in motion of her own, this girl who had decided yes, a brief moment of release in the back of a car or in the room of a silent house, this girl who had stood up later, adjusting her clothes, with no knowledge of how that moment was already shaping her life. She cut [paper] and listened. Her silence made him free. He talked like a river, like a storm, words rushing through the old house with a force and life he could not stop. At some point he began to weep again, and he could not stop that either. Rosemary made no comment whatsoever. He talked until the words slowed, ebbed, finally ceased. Silence welled. She did not speak. ... "All right," she said [at last]. "You're free." And this single act of honesty produces the deepest intimacy he has ever experienced - it's not sexual, but relational - with a human being who knows the very worst about him and yet who does not reject him for it. You can read the whole review here []...