The Keeper of Lost Things

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A beautiful story of love, loss and the redemptive power of friendship * Catherine Hall, author of DAYS OF GRACE * I was very intrigued by the premise of The Keeper of Lost Things, a book filled with characters who strive to unite lost objects with their owners, and put it on hold at my library. The synopsis made it sound like a serious journey, with characters finding themselves too on their quest to reunite these lost things, but instead it fell short. Though the book has moments of greatness and of poetic writing, the main story manages to be shallow, due to its reliance on stereotypes and convenience. I was also not fond of the jarring phrases the author randomly tossed into her writing.

Full of character, wit, and wisdom, The Keeper of Lost Things is a heartwarming tale that will enchant fans of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Garden Spells, Mrs. Queen Takes the Train, and The Silver Linings Playbook. It's such a pure novel, filled with tiny moments of joy, emotion, sadness, excitement, fear . . . I couldn't put it down! * Upon My Desk * A little context first: Laura was interviewing for the job as housekeeper/personal assistant. She fell in love with the house right away- the Padua. Anthony would later hire her. He became her employer and close friend for 40 years.

Summary

As a result, this book reads more like a collection of short stories, and I never felt invested in any of the characters. I wanted to love this more than I loved it, but there is an essence that I really did love. Sometimes, I can read a book where the ending seems to just wander off into a future and it seems natural, right, but this fell just a little short for me. The ending is especially perfect. It brings lots of tears, laughs and smiles, which probably made lots of folks on the trail I walk wonder what was going on with me.

Redemption is often to be found in unlikely friendships – between the very old and the young, people of different nationalities, or those who have little in common superficially. At a time when tensions around immigration are running high, and certain media are fuelling fears about “the other”, the depiction of surprising alliances is both reassuring and uplifting. What each of these novels offers is the possibility that there can be not only common ground, but friendship and love between disparate people. As Cannon says of her new book: “It’s about the threads that join us. There are fundamental similarities between all of us that should unite us. Instead of looking for differences between people – and being afraid of difference – we should be celebrating it.” Everything else our real life is dark enough. I think people are returning to the idea of fiction as an escape Ruth Hogan My only criticism is that there are a few instances of curious things happening and these are never explained. This takes parts of the book into the realm of the paranormal. The whole concept of the book was so wonderful that I really wanted to be transported into a world which I believed was real. I think these minor deviations from reality were unnecessary and, for me, detracted from the perfection of the book. I listened to the audio version of The Keeper of Lost Things and the narrators were fantastic. There are two story lines, with the present day story featuring Laura, divorced, treated badly by her ex-husband, feeling like she spent years letting her parents down, now working happily as an assistant for Anthony Peardew, a successful writer and a keeper of lost things. Heavy on Anthony's heart, aside from the fact that his fiance died many years ago, before they could get married, is that he lost something very dear to her the day she died. That loss, both losses, led him to the obsessive and meticulous collecting of lost things, cataloging them and caring for them, in the hopes that his lost thing would be found and cared for also. When Anthony dies, he leaves everything to Laura, with his last wishes being that she attempt to find the owners of the lost things and that she befriend his neighbor, Sunshine. We move into Anthony's house, where lost things are kept, with Laura, who is to fall in love with Freddy the gardener. We move into publisher Bomber's office with Eunice, who falls in love with him as she arrives to become his assistant. Each evolving 'romance' has a small cast of characters, some with links to the 'lost things'. Of these portrayals, the outstanding success is Sunshine, who has Down's Syndrome. Her wise, affectionate contributions to the story, in addition to 'the lovely cup of tea', have the grace and dexterity of the Anjali Dancers. Once a celebrated author of short stories now in his twilight years, Anthony Peardew has spent half his life collecting lost objects, trying to atone for a promise broken many years before.

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Hogan’s whimsical first novel weaves together the stories of two British assistants, one of whom works for a publisher in the 1970s and the other who, in the present day, works for an unusual elderly gentleman who has dedicated himself to assembling a room full of “a sad salmagundi” of 40 years’ worth of detritus lost or abandoned by its owners.

Normally, anything to do with ghosts sends me skittering away. But here, the “deceased diva” just adds a bit of humor and poignancy to the equation.

How does the story of Eunice and Bomber relate to Laura and Anthony's story? Did you find the two plot strands difficult to juggle, perhaps too distracting? Or do the two tales enhance one another?