About this title: A doctor delivers his own twins, and upon seeing that the daughter has Down's syndrome, tells his nurse to take the baby to an institution and never reveal the secret. The nurse disappears into another city to raise the child herself in this tale of redemptive love and long-buried secrets that unfolds over a quarter of a century.
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Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, New York
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780143037149ISBN:0143037145
Description: Slightly worn, lower back cover chipped, last 1/4 of copy water damaged, good reading copy. Trade PB (US), glued binding, 401 pp: Includes Reader's Guide and Questions for Discussion read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780143037149ISBN:0143037145
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Pages are really clean. No markings. Has some cover and edge wear including very small tear at the bottom of the spine. A few pages have small creases on the top corners. Does not affect text in any way. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 401 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Fine. 0143037145 Excellent condition Soft cover book, clean pages, No creases to spine, this book is Near NEW! Shop & Save With US. read more
"It's hard to believe that something like this could actually happen. I'm sure it happens more than we know. Thank goodness for unconditional love. This was a page turner and a tear jerker. Excellent book club read."
"Wow, I'm really torn as to what to say about this book. I will start by saying that Kim Edwards is a skilled writer and there's no taking that away from her. Her words flow beautifully and that was greatly appreciated by me.
I began reading this book and fell in love with it. From the beginning, I was very sure that I was going to rate it with five stars. I was intrigued by the premise: It's 1964 and a doctor's wife gives birth to twins. The twins were unexpected (no ultrasounds back then) and so the second baby, a girl with Down's Syndrome, was a shock. In the panic of a moment, the doctor, who had lost his own sister when she was 12 (due to a heart problem), panics and gives his newborn daughter, Phoebe, to his nurse, Caroline. He wants to spare his wife (and himself) the pain of having a child with Down Syndrome who might not live long. Caroline takes the baby to the home, but when she gets there, she realizes she cannot leave the child in such a wretched place and makes a split-second decision to keep her as her own.
The author skillfully goes back and forth between the doctor's family, David and Norah Henry (and their son, Paul) and Caroline's life with the girl, Phoebe. I was intrigued.
Somewhere, around page 175, I started not liking the book so much. What had been a taut, interesting story, started taking little side trips that I felt tarnished the characters and didn't stay within what I thought the author had set up. But I didn't want to dislike the book for this reason, because I don't expect the author to go where I might go or where I might have liked to see her go. Still, the things that were going on kept nagging at me and making me uneasy in a way that I don't think were intended to make me uneasy.
I began to care less and less about the characters, but stayed with the book because it was interesting to see where it went and I had already invested so much time in reading it. There were too many long descriptions of things that didn't matter to me, and no matter how hard I tried, I didn't get to know the characters in the way I thought I should.
I am stuck in the middle. In the end, I didn't really care for it all too much, but cannot say that others would not. I give the writer kudos for being so skilled with the English language. I didn't really care about any of the characters very much in the end, if at all, and I think that's what really soured me on this book.
This is a hard one for me to judge. If you're at all interested, read it for yourself and see what you think."
"This novel is the story of one family's downfall after a father's betrayal, and the creation of another family. When a doctor delivers his children, he finds that he has one perfect boy, and a girl with Down's syndrome. Unable to bear the affect he believes this will have on his family, he asks his assisting nurse to take the baby away. The novel outlines the distance he creates from his family to hide his secret, and the new family that is created when the nurse takes the little girl to raise as her own. A good read, definitely worth a beach chair and a cold drink!"
"At first I couldn't pinpoint exactly why I was not enjoying a book that sounded as though it would be 'my kind of book' in every way, but the more I read and the more I thought about it, the more reasons emerged.
From the beginning of the novel there were little details that bothered me. The plot often felt contrived, as pieces fell together too nicely. Of course life is crazy and there is always the possibility of the little pieces falling in the most peculiar way, but when all of your characters' lives seem to follow that incredible pattern, it begins to feel ridiculous.
Some of the characters themselves also became clichés. Perhaps I reached a certain point in the story where I began to look for things that bothered me and therefore found them more readily than other readers. Yet, Norah, the mother of the twins, and her sister, Bree seem to never really develop. Bree is the young, free-loving free-spirit who is thus almost a danger to Norah's thoughts on life - and that is what she remains, even when older and diagnosed with cancer (although Norah does come to appreciate her). Norah, whose life unravels for a bit after she thinks her daughter has died, drinks too much and then begins having affairs, and this is who she remains for most of the novel. The characters just seemed too much like a sappy Lifetime movie for me to really take them inside of me and keep with me.
I was also very disappointed in the character of Phoebe, the Down's syndrome daughter given away by her father. She was the driving force of the novel and yet we really never know her other than glimpses through the eyes of Caroline. Paul, her twin brother, is given thoughts but Phoebe's mind remains a mystery. I understand the difficulty in writing honestly for a character with Down's but I kept thinking of the autistic narrator in Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time who was so rich and incredible and believable (if you haven't read this one, please do!!). I just thought that Edwards had a mission in humanizing those who suffer Down's syndrome; and that she herself undermines her purpose with the complete omission of Phoebe's voice. I wanted to know this child as a child and not as a sad plot device. In all fairness, however, I have to say that I did love certain passages, as Edwards' poetic language captured me wholly.
In the end, I think that my largest issue with this book was the absolute destruction of this family. I know that what happened at the birth of the babies was tragic and life changing but I felt as though it was a bit contrived that it drove every emotion and interaction afterwards for the remainder of the characters' lives. Perhaps, for me, it just made their bonds from the beginning suspect as their destruction was made so inevitable by that one tragic mistake. I didn't believe it and perhaps, because we read to understand others and to change ourselves, I do not want to believe it."
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