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's 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.

In this hyperkinetic and relentlessly inventive novel, Japan's most popular (and controversial) fiction writer hurtles into the consciousness of the West. Hard-Boiled Wonder and the End of the World draws readers into a narrative particle accelerator in which a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is simultaneously cooler than zero and unaffectedly affecting, a hilariously funny and deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.

i had to read The Stranger for literature class.
it was part of the summer reading list.
i found it philosophically intriguing.
it's really nihilistic in the ideas that it brings up.
in terms of interest, i'd have to say that the first half was really boring and slow, and the second half was very heavy in psychological internal conflict.
i liked the stranger's concluding remarks to the chaplain.