Book Whore

I'm a book whore.

Ever since Laura Ingalls Wilder lived in her warm little cabin in the woods with Pa, Ma, Mary, and Carrie I've been sold.

Every year when my family would go on vacation, my mom and dad always gave my brother and I a little money to buy some souvenirs with. And every year my brother and I gladly squandered invested all of our money at the bookstore. We didn't care about t-shirts, colored seashells, or a memorable magnet. No, not even toys could tempt us! We would spend hours contemplating on what books to buy.

Yesterday I finished reading The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards.

It's been raved about by the New York Times and many others. It's a story about a couple, David and Norah, who quickly fell madly in love, got married, and are expecting a baby. One blustery snowy night in Lexington, Kentucky Norah goes into labor and David, a doctor, delivers a healthy baby boy. But, right after their son Paul is born Norah delivers another baby, this time a girl. David realizes as soon as Phoebe is born there is something wrong with her. Pained by the memory of his younger sister who died as a sickly child, David directs a nurse to take Phoebe to a home for the handicapped. The nurse, unable to leave Phoebe in such a horrible place, moves away and raises her as her own daughter. David tells his wife Norah that Phoebe died at birth. The rest of the book focuses on how this one secret destroyed a family. Arguments, betrayal, and disappointment are all caused by this secret; It slips right under the surface of every disagreement, but can't quite be touched.

I personally had a hard time with this book, and I genuinely wanted to like this book. While reading it I kept persuading myself that I would eventually want to eat this book up...well, it never happened. The story itself is sad, but also incredibly irritating. Every build up in the book ends up dissolving away without any real resolution. Not one of the characters were likable to me; they came off as wishy-washy, very one dimensional, and slightly distant. The characters never seemed to actually feel the emotions they had. I understand every character has their good and bad, but in this book the character's weaknesses noticeably outweighed their strengths. Each time I thought, I had figured out a character's personality, they would do something completely counter intuitive to their character. For example Norah in the beginning is such a consistent, calm, caring person, a little childish, who never took big risks. By the end she was running her own big business, having multiple affairs, acting completely irrational, and always thinking the worst about people. The Norah I perceived as a young adult is not the one I would have formulated later in life. The idea for this story is actually interesting, especially the time period it was set in, but somehow the author didn't carry it out very well. It could have been a fantastically original book, but I was left feeling disappointed and "ehh" about it all.

I did like the references to Lexington, Kentucky (where I went to college) and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (where I'm from). It was neat hearing Edwards describe places that I knew so intimately. Sadly, this is probably one of the only things that kept me interested.

Overall I wouldn't recommend this book. I just keep hoping it was all a big joke, and I accidently read the wrong, stupid version. Let me check--nope, I didn't. Dang it. Lesson learned: don't believe everything New York Times tells you.