A Review of Some of Kim Edwards' Work

The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a tour de force. Kim Edwards writes with a style that few have shown since Thomas Hardy. Rather than describing it, perhaps it's better just to let the reader try it:

The snow started to fall several hours before her labor began. A few flakes first, in the dull gray late-afternoon sky, and then wind-driven swirls and eddies around the edges of their wide front porch. He stood by her side at the window, watching sharp gusts of snow billow, then swirl and drift to the ground. All around the neighborhood, lights came on, and the naked branches of the trees turned white.

After dinner he built a fire, venturing out into the weather for wood he had piled against the garage the previous autumn. The air was bright and cold against his face, and the snow in the driveway was already halfway to his knees. He gathered logs, shaking off their soft white caps and carrying them inside. The kindling in the iron grate caught fire immediately, and he sat for at time on the hearth, cross-legged, adding logs and watching the flames leap, blue-edged and hypnotic. Outside, snow continued to fall quietly through the darkness, as bright and thick as static in the cones of light cast by the streetlights. By the time he rose and looked out the window, their car had become a soft white hill on the edge of the street. Already his footprints in the driveway had filled and disappeared.

Other writers would do well to emulate her. Amidst all the other writers that the reader confronts, she is an oasis. The Memory Keeper's Daughter is like a cold, pure stream in a green forest. It is highly recommended.

Three short stories by Edwards demonstrate that she at times writes for a certain niche. All four texts that I've read at least mentioned childbirth, so it must be one of her favorite subjects. I tired of the subject matter during the fourth writing, a short story from the collection The Secrets of a Fire King.

Still, Edwards' style is a repudiation of the apparent belief among many of today's writers that raunchy is good. I'll certainly be reading more of her work.