The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

You know, I finally know the reason why I still read trashy, sappy, romance novels. Literature nowadays is so cliche, the endings are always profound, depressing, and open-ended in some way. It's like, if there's a happy ending, it won't be a bestselling literature.

Sighz...

Whether that's true or not, I still like happy endings once in a while. I guess too much literature makes me depressed and then I need to take a break from 'quality' novels and read trashy ones instead.

It didn't used to be that way, though, classic literature has many stories with happy endings. I recently read Pride and Prejudice, for example, and it has a happy ending! I haven't been reading many classics. Maybe I should start reading them more. Almost every single literary novel nowadays are open-ended. Such a cliche!!

Makes me feel like sitting down right now and writing a literary novel with a happy ending. Bah!

Anyway, I just finished reading The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards. It doesn't exactly have the kind of ending I was just moaning about, but you'll recognize the cliche when you read it.

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The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards (432 pages)

Date Started: 26th Sept 2006
Date Finished: 29th Sept 2006

Rating:

The plot is a great one, and the prose amazing. The words just flowed off the page, making it a really enjoyable book to read. However, I felt that Edwards cheated the plot out of a really good story.

How do I explain it? Everyone knows it's a great plot, she got the plot from a real life story, in fact, and ran with it coz we all know that with a plot like that, it was probably destined to be a bestseller.

But I feel like it would've been a so much better story if given to someone who really *knew* how to make the most out of the plot. Edwards did a great job at the beginning of the novel, with the settings and the immediate consequences of the characters' actions, but it seems like she didn't know what to do with them after everything had happened. Fine, the doctor gave his daughter away, and then he and his family had their own miserable lives while his daughter had a separate life somewhere else.

And then what? Edwards didn't seem to know. She dragged it on and on and on... And finally got tired of all the characters' lives and decided to do something to end it. A very unrealistic something. And I don't mean what happened with the doctor, I mean what Caroline did after that.

I can't say more without giving away some spoilers, so if you think you wanna know, go read the book. =D