Helpful Score: 1
I can't explain it but I "took against" this book from the start. I had picked it up because I had seen a lot of posts about it and thought I might read it some time. But when I finally opened it up to read I just couldn't let go of this feeling. Normally when I start to read a book that I don't feel good about I let go of the prejudice and let the book speak for itself. I just did not do that this time.
It is 1964 and Norah is pregnant. She goes into labor several weeks early and is driven to her doctor's office in a snowstorm because the office is closer than the hospital. Her husband, also a doctor (but an orthopedic surgeon, not a baby doctor), meets his nurse at the office and together they deliver the babies.
David Henry directs the nurse, Caroline, to use gas when directed, to lessen the pain of delivery. Thus Norah is not fully conscious much of the time, and does not even know that she has delivered twins.
One is a normal healthy boy. The other is a girl with unmistakeable Down Syndrome. Dr. Henry is shaken by the girl's condition and makes a split-second decision to direct Caroline to take the baby to an institution immediately. While she is gone, he tells his wife that there were twins but that the girl died.
This is the core episode of the book, and everything after is affected by it.
I started having questions early. Was gas used in 1964? Maybe it still was. Was it likely that twins born over a month early would not have any physical issues and would be of normal healthy weight? I questioned that.
Caroline takes the baby to the institution but finds it a house of horror and she can't leave the baby there. Thus begins her life of lies. She takes off with the baby girl, disappearing from her former life entirely. I had questions here, too. She disappears entirely, leaves no notice, probably does not collect her last paycheck, cleans out her apartment and is gone. Would nobody have gone to the police to report her missing?
The two families then move on with their lives, but everything after is colored with the primary event. I know this is what Edwards was intent on conveying with this story - the ripples, the repercussions, of some decisions. How the decision affects far more than the person who made it. Yet I wondered. The family held a memorial service for little Phoebe, minus the body - Norah did not insist on seeing it and somehow David managed to convince a neighbor that he needed to bury a baby on his land without involving his wife. So there is a stone marking the non-grave.
Without ever having seen the baby, Norah dwells on it over the years. I can see how this might be as it seems unresolved. But she did not know it was unresolved, really. So I wondered about her actions and thoughts twenty years later.
There were incidents that disturbed me simply because I am sensitive to the need to treat animals right. At one time Norah rids the house of a wasp nest by using a vaccuum cleaner to suck up the wasps and then pushing the nozzle into a car's taillight so the wasps wouldn't escape. Why she couldn't call in a professional was a mystery to me, unless she just had to solve everything herself. For my part, I thought it was cruel and was one of the reasons I did not take to Norah.
Caroline at one point is trying to get the young Phoebe to get out of the street, where she is trying to rescue a kitten and Caroline says, "Forget the cat". Although she eventually lets her keep the cat, this type of disregard for a baby animal really got to me.
In the end, I simply did not like any of the characters and I was not moved by their grief at any point. Perhaps I'm just too hard on some characters and perhaps it all comes down to my not wanting to like the book in the first place.
I know many people have loved this book and I trust that it will find its way to another of those readers.
It is 1964 and Norah is pregnant. She goes into labor several weeks early and is driven to her doctor's office in a snowstorm because the office is closer than the hospital. Her husband, also a doctor (but an orthopedic surgeon, not a baby doctor), meets his nurse at the office and together they deliver the babies.
David Henry directs the nurse, Caroline, to use gas when directed, to lessen the pain of delivery. Thus Norah is not fully conscious much of the time, and does not even know that she has delivered twins.
One is a normal healthy boy. The other is a girl with unmistakeable Down Syndrome. Dr. Henry is shaken by the girl's condition and makes a split-second decision to direct Caroline to take the baby to an institution immediately. While she is gone, he tells his wife that there were twins but that the girl died.
This is the core episode of the book, and everything after is affected by it.
I started having questions early. Was gas used in 1964? Maybe it still was. Was it likely that twins born over a month early would not have any physical issues and would be of normal healthy weight? I questioned that.
Caroline takes the baby to the institution but finds it a house of horror and she can't leave the baby there. Thus begins her life of lies. She takes off with the baby girl, disappearing from her former life entirely. I had questions here, too. She disappears entirely, leaves no notice, probably does not collect her last paycheck, cleans out her apartment and is gone. Would nobody have gone to the police to report her missing?
The two families then move on with their lives, but everything after is colored with the primary event. I know this is what Edwards was intent on conveying with this story - the ripples, the repercussions, of some decisions. How the decision affects far more than the person who made it. Yet I wondered. The family held a memorial service for little Phoebe, minus the body - Norah did not insist on seeing it and somehow David managed to convince a neighbor that he needed to bury a baby on his land without involving his wife. So there is a stone marking the non-grave.
Without ever having seen the baby, Norah dwells on it over the years. I can see how this might be as it seems unresolved. But she did not know it was unresolved, really. So I wondered about her actions and thoughts twenty years later.
There were incidents that disturbed me simply because I am sensitive to the need to treat animals right. At one time Norah rids the house of a wasp nest by using a vaccuum cleaner to suck up the wasps and then pushing the nozzle into a car's taillight so the wasps wouldn't escape. Why she couldn't call in a professional was a mystery to me, unless she just had to solve everything herself. For my part, I thought it was cruel and was one of the reasons I did not take to Norah.
Caroline at one point is trying to get the young Phoebe to get out of the street, where she is trying to rescue a kitten and Caroline says, "Forget the cat". Although she eventually lets her keep the cat, this type of disregard for a baby animal really got to me.
In the end, I simply did not like any of the characters and I was not moved by their grief at any point. Perhaps I'm just too hard on some characters and perhaps it all comes down to my not wanting to like the book in the first place.
I know many people have loved this book and I trust that it will find its way to another of those readers.
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