I saw a blurb on TV this evening about the movie “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.” The premise (as much as I could determine from the brief commerical) was that couple had twins daughters. One of the twins was normal, but the other one had “something” wrong with her. The commerical didn’t say what the something way. So the husband and doctor told the mother that the different baby had died. Apparently, she lived and ended up being adopted by another family. The commercial intimated that all sorts of problems ensued as a result of the situation. It sounds like a good movie, but not one that I’d pay to see at the movie theater. I’ll wait till it comes out on DVD, and I’ll watch it on PayPerView.
Okay - now THAT’s what I got from the commercial. Parts of it are correct and some aren’t. Here’s the official description of the movie from the website.
This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins.
His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a brilliantly crafted story of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love.
Now THAT sounds much better than what I got from the commercial. Rather than seeing the movie, I think I will buy the book. LOL!
Update: Oh, the value of research, and the folly of not listening carefully to commercials when it’s something that sounds interesting to me. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a movie that’s on TV TONIGHT. I just set TiVo to tape it, and I’ll watch it sometime in the coming week.
Sphere: Related Content
April 13th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
This book was recommended to me but I had a real hard time getting into it. In fact, I put it down and didn’t finish it. It just seemed to dark and dismal to me.
Let me know what you think if you read it.
April 13th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
It was an “okay” movie. Nothing to talk about. Just a man who made a quick decision and lived to regret it but died before it was resolved.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:51 pm
[...] The story reminds me of the movie I saw the other day, “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.” [...]