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The Keeper of Stories: The most charming and uplifting novel you will read this year!

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I deal in other people’s stories every day. Everyone does indeed have a story to tell, and like Janice, I believe it is a privilege when someone chooses to share their story with you. That’s what is at the heart of The Keeper of Storiesand what made it a poignant and lovely book to get lost in. As Janice is a “collector of stories”, there are many mini-stories that you’ll find in this book. All of these are part of Janice’s repertoire, and most of them are heartfelt and memorable stories in their own right. I enjoyed all of these little nuggets from Janice’s collection. Cleaner Janice is a recent addition to the cast of marginalised women toiling on the margins of society that have been populating recent literary fiction output. Janice is so sympathetically drawn that readers will want to root for her from the beginning. Trapped in a stale marriage that has run its course and seemingly devoid of a story of her own, Janice instead collects the anecdotes of the colourful, idiosyncratic people she cleans for - until one of her clients becomes interested in her story after all, But what will happen when Janice starts reflecting on who she actually is? Cleaner Janice knows that it is in people's stories that you really get to know them. From recently widowed Fiona and her son Adam to opera-singing Geordie, the quiet bus driver Euan and the pretentious Mrs. "YeahYeahYeah" and her fox terrier, Decius, Janice has a unique insight into the community around her.

Mrs B is no fool and knows there is more to Janice than meets the eye. What is she hiding? After all, doesn’t everyone have a story to tell? Book Summary Print Length Janice is a cleaner who collects stories. However, she doesn’t know her worth. She doesn’t think she has her own story until she meets Mrs B. She finally learns her value and her own story and can choose to create her own story as she wishes. This is a life-affirming book in which ordinary people each have their own story that will resonate with the reader. These ordinary stories are not usually heard but here they are told with such empathy and understanding that you feel you really know the characters and become absorbed in their lives and what happens to them. I have read this book three times now and I find new insights on each reading. I recommend this book highly and look forward to further books by this author. AnneH, 9 March 2022 Life-affirming, hopeful fiction that can definitely fit into the ‘Uplit’ genre, this wonderful novel will definitely be on my list of ‘Best Books of 2022’. Highly recommended! I really enjoyed this book. I was drawn in by the beautiful cover and the title; the blurb intrigued me enough to request the title and I was not at all disappointed!She can’t recall what started her collection. Maybe it was in a fragment of conversation overheard as she cleaned a sink? Before long (as she dusted a sitting room or defrosted a fridge) she noticed people were telling her their stories. Perhaps they always had done, but now it is different, now the stories are reaching out to her and she gathers them to her… In all honesty, this is a gentle read where not much happens. But, actually, I quite appreciated this story for the absence of twists and turns. The scenes between Mrs B and Janice were dominated with dry wit and sarcasm which I thought added to the entertainment of the story. It is definitely a novel about character personalities over everything else, and this reinforces the slower pace of the book. Jessica Whittaker has a wonderful range of voice intonations and emotions and I will be looking for other books she has narrated. This is a story that offers something quite different. It is about a very quiet woman who seems to be on the outskirts of society, but has more power than she realises. I enjoyed reading her monologue of the dog she walks and appreciated seeing Janice’s lioness emerging as she finds her voice. For instance, I’m not sure I could have tolerated Janice’s husband as much as she had!

If you ever feel like you need some light entertainment in between more serious or painful reads, then this is the right book for you. I certainly felt I could do with such a book and it filled that craving nearly perfectly.Secrets On The Estate” by Mel Sherratt – Book Review @writermels #SecretsOnTheEstate #EstateSeries #BookReview#NovNov23 November 28, 2023 Janice is a cleaner, she's married to Mike and they have a grown up son Simon. Janice spends her days catching buses, cleaning people’s houses, some of her customers are nice to her and others don’t consider she’s a human being and has feelings. So why only three stars? Because I found the main character, Janice, pretty annoying and clueless. She is portrayed as a smart middle aged woman, but her actions are all on the contrary: she stays with her freeloading husband, she doesn't stand her ground with people that push her around, and miraculously, she is friends with many of her clients. Having said that - and if you are prepared to get past this - the stories are nice and the dialogues with the dog made me smile all the time. There are some fascinating characters in the book, almost all of whom are Janice’s clients or their family members. There’s Fiona, a grieving widow, and her teenaged son Adam who is still learning to face life without his father. There’s Geordie Bowman, a rich and famous opera singer with a generous heart. There’s Mrs. YeahYeahYeah and her husband Mr. NoNoNotNow, thus named by Janice for their catchphrase. But no character is as wonderful as their fox terrier Decius. The way the author has brought Decius to life is so brilliant, you won’t help but fall in love with him and his f-bombs. ( Oh yeah, a dog who cusses! 😂) Janice herself is pretty well-sketched, what with her love for books and her constant worries about things both great and small. She comes across as a really interesting character.

Mrs. B wants Janice answer a question before she agrees to the help-“If you could only take one novel with you to a Desert Island, what would it be?” and when Janice responds “Vanity Fair” -Mrs. B agrees to hire her. After studying history at university, I moved to London to work in advertising. However, in my spare time I studied floristry at night school and eventually opened my own flower shop. I soon came to appreciate that flower shops offer a unique window into people’s stories and eventually I began to photograph and write about this floral life in a series of non-fiction books. Later, I continued my interest in writing when I founded my fountain pen company, Plooms.co.uk. And the writing is pretty good, it is engaging and the flow is just perfect for this kind of book, which is way out of my comfort zone and therefor quite difficult to rate and review. In a Nutshell: The book tries hard to match up to the outstanding cover but after a point, it just bored me. I have a feeling that my rating would have been lower had I been actually reading this instead of listening to it. But it does have its good moments.

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Janice is an extraordinary cleaner. She really cares for her clients and spends time ensuring their needs are met with barely a thought for her own. She’s a collector of stories and shares fragments of them with us as we read on. But her own story? That is a deep, dark secret that she can’t bring herself to share. Her life begins to change when she meets Mrs B, a cantankerous nonagenarian with an interesting story of her own. At its heart this is a story of friendship and it’s really rather magnificent. This book really isn’t something I would’ve found organically and chosen for myself to read, but I was actually pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed it in the end. If you want something a little bit different, and you’re the kind of person who makes up a little narrative about every stranger they people watch on public transport - you might really like this one.

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