The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards
Penguin, HK$109
The Memory Keeper's Daughter excels in its unabashed tackling of human flaws. When Norah Henry goes into labour in 1964 and produces twins, her husband, the overseeing doctor, makes a decision about the younger baby that will affect everyone present for the rest of their lives. He chooses to keep the first-born, a boy, but orders away the second child because she has Down's syndrome. Then, after he instructs the nurse to take the newborn to a special home, he tells his wife their daughter died during delivery. Dr Henry never considers the possibility his daughter may grow up not in the home to which she has been condemned but in the care of the nurse who couldn't leave her with strangers. Neither does he realise how the loss of the child might corrode the relationships he once held dear. Linear in style, although told in parallel fashion, the stories of the twins and their parents wrench in a way that family tragedies often do. Kim Edwards should be applauded for relying less on emotional manipulation than compassion in telling her tale. Here's predicting this remarkable debut catches the eye of the movie makers.