BOOK DISCUSSION: The Memory Keepers Daughter

[barbszy]

Sammi, I agree. Of course, in the sister's case, she had a parent who was concerned for HER. The brother had 2 parents who were only concerned for THEMSELVES.

[Joy]

Barbszy, you hit it right on when you said the parents were concerned with themselves and I think that is why I really didn't like either of them. The mother especially bothered me in the begining when she drinking and driving as Pippe pointed out. I kept thinking what about your son---you need to take care of him.
I think the story of the sister made it a likeable book and the story of the brother and his parents made you keep reading because you couldn't really predict what they were going to do next.

[Sammi1961]

I agree Joy, both story lines were important to make you want to keep reading. I also did not like the self medicating with alcohol.

[Pippe]

Thinking some more about the story - I wonder how the mother would have handled having a special needs child. Since she was so young when she married - did her husband suspect that she would not be able to handle two babies and especially the prognosis he assumed would be the girl's fate (institutionalized)? My feeling reading the book was that he was reliving the feelings he had about losing his own sister and feeling ignored as a child and not wanting to relive it.

Pippe

[barbszy]

Pippe, I do think that he had good intentions like you said. There is an expression "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and in this story that certainly rings true.

I think he was trying to protect his wife from the kind of heartbreak he saw his mother go through. And I think he was a product of the thinking of his time, that such institutions were Always A Good Thing.

I'm still amazed that she was told anything....I think that if he had kept the whole thing a secret, it would have been an even more amazing story later when the truth came out.

[Sammi1961]

I agree with you, barbszy - his sister and her death affected his decision. I don't think he wanted his wife to suffer the heartbreak and I don' t think he could have handled what he expected - that his daughter would die young of heart complications or something (common in downs syndrom children) I think he was trying to protect himself and his wife. I wonder, too, if he thought his wife would not want to instituational the girl but to keep her at home and raise her which might have taken too much attention away from their son and her husband (I think he suffered lack of attention from his parents and could not chance going through lack of attention from his wife too) Funny, though, how that sort of turned out to be the case anyway.