Book Reviews: Night/Memory Keeper's Daughter

I have to start by saying, I have been blogging about almost nothing but books and book reviews...but I have been doing a LOT of reading. Summer is upon us, school's out and the slick humidity and daylight that never seems to end just naturally pulls me back to when I was a child and school was out for summer. I literally (no pun intended) had my nose in a book all summer long. And so it goes on, for me it's better than swimming, better than ice cream, better than air; a good book I can carry with me through all the pit stops of summer, and lose myself into a fabulously woven story. The next two fall into that category, definitely the kind that take you away to a different place and time where you identify so completely with the characters that later you have a memory of them and momentarily you are puzzled at whether they were real or not.

Night by Elie Weisel

I was so unaware, had no real idea of what this book was when I saw it. I had seen it around some book blogs, so the title stood out in my mind when I breezed by it at a local thrift store. It was a very thin book, so deceiving. I scooped it up for 25 cents. Later at home, I picked it up to read the prologue thinking I would read it later in the week after I finished my current read. The prologue alone was so haunting and mesmerizing, I read on. I read on past dinner, on past my husband on the couch watching the 10 o'clock news, and on to the end of the story, leaving me so humbled and ashamed of the things I take for granted. Between the covers of this story is the story of a man that lived through the unthinkable. His world, his reality came to a screeching halt, everything he believed in stripped from him slowly with hate and malice. It is truly unimaginable the things he witnessed, lived through. I believe everyone should read this book and never, ever forget that in this world, the unthinkable could happen to us, to anyone. We should never forget such things. Imagine, your reality could change and your humanity could be robbed from you, your right to live no longer yours, but in the hands of someone who wants to eradicate you from this earth. There is nothing else I can say-this story cannot be summed up. I also loved Weisel's writing style; beautiful, somewhat poetic at times, harsh and slicing at others. Five stars.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

I really loved this book. It was wonderfully written, the imagery taking me to the heart of each moment described in this story. It was also bitterly sad, yet still hopeful.

The story opens with Dr. David Henry delivers his own twins during a blizzard one cold dark night in 1961. Alone but for his wife and his nurse Dr. Henry brings his children into the world, a healthy beautiful boy first, and then a daughter, which he immediately recognizes has Down Syndrome. During a time when Downs children were often sent to institutions, and after his own very personal and devastating loss of his young sister, Dr. Henry makes a split decision that will forever change his life.

"Later," Edwards writes, "when he considered this night -- and he would think of it often, in the months and years to come: the turning point of his life, the moments around which everything else would always gather -- what he remembered was the silence in the room and the snow falling outside." In that quiet, terrifying moment, the grief and resentment caused by his sister's death at the age of 12 washes back over him, and he acts to preserve their vision of a happy future. He hands the baby to his nurse and asks her to take it to a home outside the city for handicapped children. When Norah awakens a few minutes later, he tells her their second baby was stillborn. "He had wanted to spare her, to protect her from loss and pain; he had not understood that loss would follow her regardless, as persistent and life-shaping as a stream of water. Nor had he anticipated his own grief, woven with the dark threads of his past."

Edwards story is an intricate and delicately woven tale about the dark power of secrets and the redemptive power of forgiveness. Another 5 star book.

Now I'm off to read A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah....