Reaction: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

I just finished The Memory Keeper's Daughter, and normally I would attempt a review, to encourage others to read it or not. This time, I've been too moved, too touched deep within me to care whether you take my recommendation. I would like to share my reaction, though, to see if other agree or can bring a new lens to the issues the book helped me consider.

The story hinges around a set of fraternal twins born on a cold night in the 1960s. The son, born first, is healthy and perfect, but the daughter, Phoebe, clearly has Down's syndrome. Thinking to spare his wife pain, her husband (who is also the doctor delivering the children) asks the nurse to take the child to an institution. Instead, the nurse raises the daughter as her own.

Of course, the deception involved in this plot create rifts within the family. However, what spoke to me so deeply was the manner in which the author handled Phoebe's upbringing. As a child with a genetic developmental delay, she clearly took longer to grasp items, to perform simple tasks, to speak. Be that as it may, the nurse who mothered her chose to believe that Phoebe could achieve. Eventually, she met a like-minded mother of a child with Down's, and the following philosophy ensued:

"What would happen . . . if they simply went on assuming their children would do everything. Perhaps not quickly. Perhaps not by the book. But what if they simply erased those growth and development charts, with their precise, constricting points and curves? What if they kept their expectations but erased the time line?"

This attitude was very progressive for the time (the author scores points for acknowledging this), and I believe it still underlies quality special education. Overall, I found it a meaningful facet of the novel, especially because the remainder of the novel also pulled its own weight.