December - The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan
This is a delightful, charming, and comic read set in London and Brighton which I adored. Laura is a divorced and broken woman for whom intimacy has proved to be a disappointment. She finds employment as housekeeper and assistant to writer Anthony Peardew, who experienced heartbreak with the loss of his beloved Therese on his wedding day. That event has coloured and haunted his entire life, with guilt over a broken promise, a lost communion medal, and led to the enormous collection of lost items which he has found with the hope of reuniting them with their owners. He dies, leaving his home, Padua, to Laura for whom it is a sanctuary, with a condition that she makes efforts to restore the lost items to their true owners. Whilst owning Padua brings security and delight to Laura, the real prize turns out to be the task Anthony sets for it offers Laura a path toward resurrecting her life again, tenuously learning to trust people and connect with the world again.
With faltering steps, Laura befriends the extraordinary girl that is Sunshine, a downs syndrome child who has been bullied. Sunshine is special and has the capacity to see and understand things that elude Laura, particularly when it comes to a irascible and troubled ghost and the lost items. Laura, Freddy, the gardener, Sunshine, and Carrot, a rescued dog, begin to connect as a unit slowly developing the strength to overcome obstacles such as the ugly local rumours concerning Laura. There is a parallel story about Eunice and Bomber, and the tragedies and triumphs that litter their lives through time. The storylines do eventually connect. Interspersed throughout we have entrancing and shocking tales of some of the lost items, and the various situations that the owners found themselves in. Laura, with the help of Freddy and Sunshine, sets up a website documenting the lost collection only to find it becomes so much more than she envisaged.
ZOOM video meeting on January 7, 2021. Jan unable to join due to mandarin season but liked the book as well.
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