The Memory Keeper's Daughter

I just read this book called The Memory Keeper's Daughter.










I was really skeptical about it at first, but my mom read it for book club, so I gave it a chance. It was a really intense book. Most of it is really depressing, and some of the characters were really frustrating. But, after I finished it I decided that I really did like it. It gave really good perspective on life. The book is centered on choices. One choice really. A split-second decision that changed the course of a family's life forever.

It's always so crazy to think about all of our decisions and how they shape our lives. Sometimes we choose to do things that have minor effect on our futures, but sometimes we choose to do things that will forever impact our futures, whether it's for good or bad. Usually we have time to think over our choices before we make big changes. Hopefully marriage is one of those things, and buying a house or car, deciding on a major, etc. But sometimes things are decided so fast that we barely have time to really think things over before changes are already in motion. In the book, the father makes a decision in the moment and doesn't realize the impact it's going to have in his life. It's a decision that he keeps secret from everyone in his life, even his wife. And it destroys his marriage. He never tells his family what he did. He thought he was keeping everyone safe by keeping this secret, but really he was destroying his own life and the lives of those around him. He was so stubborn, he was afraid of what would happen if he told what he did, he thought it would ruin everything, but instead, by keeping it to himself, everything was ruined anyway. It's so interesting to see how certain decisions pan out in the long run. It may be barely detectable, but every choice we make shapes every moment of our lives.

The book goes through the character's lives. It focuses a few chapters on a year or two of each of their lives and then it skips several years. I think it goes through 20 or 30 years. It really made me stop and think about how things change over the years and the possibilities that life holds. I'm only 21, I still have 3 or 4 more "20 year" spans to look forward to. That's a lot of time.

I think it's really easy for us to get caught up in our own lives and in silly superficial things that aren't really important to our overall life. We forget that we have years left to live. Especially being single and in college, nothing is really permanent, everything is changing and sometimes I feel completely lost. I get so focused on one thing that I forget that in 5 years, everything will probably be totally different.