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If good things come in small packages, then Weike Wang’s first novel, Chemistry, is a very good thing indeed. Featuring a struggling scientist and the collapse of her professional and romantic lives, Wang’s short and bittersweet debut packs a devastating emotional wallop despite its slender size.

Chemistry takes readers on a no-holds-barred trip into the dark and choppy waters of a woman’s skeptical mind as it does battle with her heart. When we first meet our anonymous narrator, she is several years into her graduate studies in chemistry only to find her enthusiasm for the subject flagging as her experiments fail to produce publishable results, much to the consternation of her advisor and the exasperation of her austere Chinese parents. Her private life proves no source of comfort, as she and her live-in boyfriend have entered an uneasy standoff due to her reluctance to accept his repeated marriage proposals. When a beaker-fueled breakdown at the lab leads to an indefinite leave of absence and her boyfriend accepts a faculty position in another state, it seems the narrator has finally hit rock bottom. She soon realizes, however, that her downward spiral is only beginning and that the second law of thermodynamics—that systems tend toward chaos—applies not only in the lab but also to life.

Reminiscent of Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation, Chemistry is an intimate and insightful novel that reads more like a memoir than it does fiction, so honest is its portrayal of its central character’s rich internal life. Wang’s own background in academia is an asset, adding authority and veracity to the protagonist and her world. Unafraid to explore the fallibility and foibles of our narrator, Wang exposes and probes her neuroses and insecurities with pithy and precise prose, capably blending in moments of wry comedy and absurd observations that keep things from ever getting too bleak. Emotionally exacting and daring, Chemistry is an astonishing and assured debut from one of fiction’s most exciting new voices.

If good things come in small packages, then Weike Wang’s first novel, Chemistry, is a very good thing indeed. Featuring a struggling scientist and the collapse of her professional and romantic lives, Wang’s short and bittersweet debut packs a devastating emotional wallop despite its slender size.

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Longtime editor and essayist Janet Benton turns her considerable skills to fiction with her debut, Lilli de Jong, a beautifully written historical novel set in 1880s Philadelphia about pregnancy, motherhood and the fight for economic independence.

Twenty-two-year-old Lilli discovers she is pregnant after her lover leaves for Pittsburgh in search of better employment. Though he has promised to send for her, Lilli is fearful of being shunned from her close-knit Quaker community and leaves home, taking refuge in a charity residence for unwed mothers in urban Philadelphia. After her daughter is born, she decides to keep the baby, a highly unusual decision in the late-19th century, when finding acceptance and shelter was nearly impossible for an unmarried mother.

Desperate for employment, Lilli is hired as a wet nurse for a wealthy family, at the financial and emotional expense of boarding her own daughter, with catastrophic results. Again and again, circumstances force Lilli to choose between her moral ideals and harsh social realities.

The novel is styled as a first-person diary, and Lilli’s eloquent self-expression is a product of her Quaker education and training as a teacher. Her clear-eyed view of her situation and her fearless questioning of a repressive system make for exhilarating reading, but even her spirit can’t always compete with the hardships of a culture where even wealthy white women had little economic agency.

It is a testament to Benton as a writer that this novel wears its considerable historical detail so lightly, although the narrative does get bogged down with repetitive descriptions of nursing and a few hard-to-believe deus ex machinas. But in its depiction of a mother’s fierce attachment to her child, Lilli de Jong has real resonance in today’s battles over women’s reproductive health and the rights of working mothers.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Janet Benton for Lilli de Jong.

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Longtime editor and essayist Janet Benton turns her considerable skills to fiction with her debut, Lilli de Jong, a beautifully written historical novel set in 1880s Philadelphia about pregnancy, motherhood and the fight for economic independence.

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In Katherine Heiny’s debut novel, Standard Deviation, we meet Graham and Audra Cavanaugh, a typical New York couple with a city condo, a kid and a busy social life. Stylish, youngish and always saying outrageous things, Audra is a firecracker who delights and embarrasses all at once. Graham, her much older husband of 12 years, is quieter and more filtered. He loves Audra as she is, but he often finds himself wondering how this marriage of opposites has worked out so well over the years.

In statistics, standard deviation is defined as a measure of how far a number diverges from the group as a whole. The same can be said about Heiny’s novel, as she introduces characters and situations that make Audra and Graham’s relationship appear less and less normal. Among them is Graham’s ex-wife, Elspeth, whom Graham hasn’t talked to in years, but an unexpected run-in rekindles a relationship and leaves him questioning his marriage to Audra. There is also the parenting of Graham and Audra’s 10-year-old son, Matthew, who has Asperger’s syndrome and an obsession with origami. A slew of other interesting and peculiar acquaintances compose a veritable parade through the couple’s living room, adding perspective to their marriage with a bit of comedy mixed in.

Heiny offers a fun read about family dynamics as she sidesteps too much seriousness with quick wit and humorous dialogue.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In Katherine Heiny’s debut novel, Standard Deviation, we meet Graham and Audra Cavanaugh, a typical New York couple with a city condo, a kid and a busy social life. Stylish, youngish and always saying outrageous things, Audra is a firecracker who delights and embarrasses all at once. Graham, her much older husband of 12 years, is quieter and more filtered. He loves Audra as she is, but he often finds himself wondering how this marriage of opposites has worked out so well over the years.

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In The Leavers, Lisa Ko’s assured debut novel, Deming Guo, an 11-year-old Chinese boy living in New York City, experiences a child’s worst nightmare: His single mother, Polly, an undocumented immigrant, goes to work one day and doesn’t come home. That event is the catalyst for a timely story of immigrant families in America.

As a teenager, Polly, born in a poor Chinese province, gets pregnant after a fling with a classmate. She goes into debt to a loan shark for the money to travel to America, where she has the baby. She soon discovers she can’t care for the boy while working to pay off the debt, so she sends 1-year-old Deming back to China, where her elderly father cares for him. But when Deming is 6, he returns to the U.S. after his grandfather dies.

By that time, Polly is living with her boyfriend; his sister, Vivian; and Vivian’s son, Michael. After Polly disappears, Deming spends a brief stint in foster care. He is adopted by a childless white couple, 40ish professors who live upstate and change Deming’s name to Daniel. By age 21, Daniel is an indifferent student, an aspiring rock musician and an inveterate gambler. His adoptive parents encourage him to enroll in classes at their college, but the city and a music career hold greater appeal. All of these plans are upended when Michael, who hasn’t seen Daniel since the adoption, tracks him down with information about Polly.

Some of the story’s contrasts, especially between Deming’s birth and adoptive families, are too stark, but The Leavers (winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded by Barbara Kingsolver) is a thoughtful work about undocumented immigrants and the threats they endure. Midway through the novel, Polly recalls a subway ride when Deming was little. The train emerges from underground, “tearing straight into the sunlight, and I couldn’t wait to see your face.” That’s a beautiful expression of love that every family should appreciate.

In The Leavers, Lisa Ko’s assured debut novel, Deming Guo, an 11-year-old Chinese boy living in New York City, experiences a child’s worst nightmare: His single mother, Polly, an undocumented immigrant, goes to work one day and doesn’t come home. That event is the catalyst for a timely story of immigrant families in America.

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There are few romantic heroes in classic literature more confusing or less sympathetic than Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. In her debut novel, Sarah Shoemaker has set about unmasking this brooding hero. Fully immersing readers in the language and culture of the 19th century, Mr. Rochester is a coming-of-age journey that follows the lonely and motherless Edward Rochester from bleak Thornfield Hall to sunny and humid Jamaica, through a childhood that feels torn from a Dickens novel and into the murky waters of adulthood.

Mr. Rochester differs from popular Jane Eyre retellings, such as Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, in that Shoemaker, a retired librarian, succeeds in painting a sympathetic portrait of the man. Edward is revealed to be deeply emotional and achingly lonely. His sole desire in life is a companion—be it lover or friend—and his repeated inability to find one is what drives him to become the man readers know and (sometimes) love. The strength of the novel lies in Shoemaker’s acute attention to detail and historical accuracy, particularly in her treatment of Jamaica, where slavery is king and everything young Edward thought he knew has been turned upside down.

Mr. Rochester is beautifully paced and compelling as it delivers a sweeping narrative and a new perspective to one of literature’s most famous love stories. Many questions and confusions from the original story—such as Bertha’s backstory, why Edward hides his feelings and why he finally decides to propose—have been answered. Though the novel will appeal most to fans of Jane Eyre, Shoemaker has recreated the spirit of the original, which will help those unfamiliar with the text enjoy this retelling.

There are few romantic heroes in classic literature more confusing or less sympathetic than Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. In her debut novel, Sarah Shoemaker has set about unmasking this brooding hero. Fully immersing readers in the language and culture of the 19th century, Mr. Rochester is a coming-of-age journey that follows the lonely and motherless Edward Rochester from bleak Thornfield Hall to sunny and humid Jamaica, through a childhood that feels torn from a Dickens novel and into the murky waters of adulthood.

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In Gail Honeyman’s captivating debut novel, we meet Eleanor Oliphant, a 30-year-old single woman working at a downtown design firm in Glasgow, Scotland. This might seem like the perfect setting for a saucy lifestyle, but Eleanor is less Carrie Bradshaw and more Sophia Petrillo of “The Golden Girls.”

From the outside, Eleanor’s regimented and lonely life—which includes sensible, black Velcro shoes and lots of vodka—might be construed as depressing and that of an outcast. But this is where Honeyman proves us wrong. For all her awkwardness and complete lack of friends, Eleanor is anything but sad or apologetic. Eleanor, in fact, is fine, and sometimes even shockingly hilarious in how she perceives the world.

A change is due, however, when two unexpected incidents force Eleanor to mingle with the rest of the population. First, a love interest, in the form of a musician named Johnnie Lomond, jump-starts her fashion and vanity sensibilities. Second, Raymond, the nerdy IT guy at work, pulls her into various social obligations, despite her best efforts to avoid them.

Hesitant at first, Eleanor eventually finds these interactions to be comforting and full of hope. But old demons are hard to shake, and Eleanor crashes hard into her old ways as she suddenly decides that joy and friendships are not things she deserves.

Honeyman includes some horrific details that make up Eleanor’s past, but somehow they never feel burdening or despairing. Ultimately, this is a feel-good story that will make readers laugh and cheer for Eleanor as she learns that the past doesn’t dictate the future, and that happiness can be hers. This is a must-read for those who love characters with quirks.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Gail Honeyman, author of the 2017 breakout debut, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In Gail Honeyman’s captivating debut novel, we meet Eleanor Oliphant, a 30-year-old single woman working at a downtown design firm in Glasgow, Scotland. This might seem like the perfect setting for a saucy lifestyle, but Eleanor is less Carrie Bradshaw and more Sophia Petrillo of…

It is the rare debut novel that reveals a writer of such immense talent as to achieve a dazzling literary home run the first time up to bat. Such is the case with Benjamin Ludwig’s Ginny Moon, an extraordinary coming-of-age story told from the perspective of a 14-year-old protagonist with autism.

Ginny’s disability isn’t even the most formidable challenge facing this plucky young heroine, who has survived the horrors of living with her violent, drug-addicted mother, Gloria, as well as a sad trail of failed foster care placements.

Ludwig’s novel begins as Ginny has finally found solace in the “Blue House” with her “Forever Parents,” a courageous young couple who, despite their determination to be the teen’s salvation, soon realize that they have signed up for more struggles than they anticipated. When Ginny becomes obsessed with reuniting with her birth mother and her beloved “baby doll,” her adoptive parents and school officials alike must struggle to keep the teen safe from her impulsive and methodical, albeit well-intentioned, behavior.

Despite the novel’s sobering subject matter, including child abuse, kidnapping and the realities of living with an autistic child, Ludwig has interjected his often-heartbreaking narrative with laugh-out-loud observations from Ginny, who loves Michael Jackson and displays a wicked sense of humor.

In a letter to his readers, Ludwig explains that he and his wife experienced similar, although less dramatic, challenges after adopting an autistic teenager, who helped inspire this tremendous debut novel.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It is the rare debut novel that reveals a writer of such immense talent as to achieve a dazzling literary home run the first time up to bat. Such is the case with Benjamin Ludwig’s Ginny Moon, an extraordinary coming-of-age story told from the perspective of a 14-year-old protagonist with autism.

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BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, May 2017

Salt Houses is a dazzling debut about four generations of the Yacoubs, a Palestinian family originally from Jaffa. Told from multiple points of view, the novel offers a unique perspective on Arab displacement, assimilation and the very notion of home. At the same time, it puts a human face on a conflict that many of us need to better understand.

The Yacoubs were relocated from Jaffa to Nablus before the novel even begins. The story opens in 1963, 15 years after this first relocation and just as Salma is reading the future in coffee grounds on her daughter Alia’s wedding day. Though Salma tries to soften the message she detects, it soon becomes clear that the family will experience further displacements. After the Six-Day War (1967), they are forced to leave their home. Salma joins extended family in Jordan, and Alia and her husband, Atef, relocate to Kuwait where they raise a family. After Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the family scatters once again; this time the grown children of Alia and Atef, now with families of their own, disperse to Paris, Boston and Beirut.

Palestinian-American author Hala Alyan, who is also a practicing psychologist, balances the ordinary joys and burdens of family life with the deeper clashes of culture and homesickness that occur as the Yacoubs spread across the globe. Whether she is depicting the stormy marriage between Alia and Atef or their daughter Widad’s concerns over her stepson’s interest in the more extreme practitioners of Islam, Alyan serves her story well through precise, almost poetic language and empathy toward her characters.

Though the novel is not overtly political, both Alia and Atef are haunted by memories of Alia’s brother, Mustafa, who died in an Israeli jail. But nostalgia is an indulgence they can ill afford. Transience is their way of life, and resilience is their legacy to their children. Salt Houses speaks to the specificity of the Palestinian diaspora, but it also mirrors the experiences of immigrants and exiles all over the world, making it very much a book for every reader.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Salt Houses is a dazzling debut about four generations of the Yacoubs, a Palestinian family originally from Jaffa. Told from multiple points of view, the novel offers a unique perspective on Arab displacement, assimilation and the very notion of home. At the same time, it puts a human face on a conflict that many of us need to better understand.

Review by

New York City’s renaissance—safer streets, graffiti-free subways, suddenly trendy neighborhoods—has brought with it a nostalgia for grittier times. A wide range of books from Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire to Patti Smith’s Just Kids have explored the drama and poetry of New York’s so-called bad old days. John Freeman Gill’s first novel, The Gargoyle Hunters fits neatly into this subgenre. It unfolds in Manhattan during the mid-1970s when crime was rampant and New York City teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.

The book revolves around 13-year-old Griffin Watts, who lives with his mother, sister and various boarders in a dilapidated Manhattan brownstone. That is, when he’s not roaming the city at night with his father, who “liberates”—steals—gargoyles and other architectural ornaments from the city’s aging but beautiful old buildings. Griffin wants so desperately to spend time with his dad that he can’t see the looming danger, both emotional and physical. Scaling a building to swipe another treasure for his dad, Griffin says, “I wasn’t sure whether I felt like a mountain climber or a marionette.”

At a deeper level, Gill—who knows the city intimately and is even a real estate columnist and editor—is wrestling with the nature of change. Cities like New York evolve (for better or worse) the same way people do, and the real danger comes when we ignore that reality. Fans of Richard Russo will appreciate the complex dynamic between needy, young Griffin and his father, whose breezy affability masks profound, even abusive, flaws.

Some of Gill’s dialogue strains to be humorous, and readers outside of New York will have to decide how interested they are in some of Gotham’s long-lost landmarks and sports stars. Overall, though, The Gargoyle Hunters is an absorbing family tale and a wise meditation on aging.

New York City’s renaissance—safer streets, graffiti-free subways, suddenly trendy neighborhoods—has brought with it a nostalgia for grittier times. A wide range of books from Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire to Patti Smith’s Just Kids have explored the drama and poetry of New York’s so-called bad old days. John Freeman Gill’s first novel, The Gargoyle Hunters fits neatly into this subgenre. It unfolds in Manhattan during the mid-1970s when crime was rampant and New York City teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.

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From its brilliant opening sentence, “Tell me what you can’t forget, and I’ll tell you who you are,” Julie Buntin’s debut novel creates a hauntingly original atmosphere for a familiar story. In Marlena, a woman in her 30s recalls events from two decades earlier, when a brief friendship had a profound impact on her life.

When Cat was 15, she and her “full-blown poor” family, which included her divorced mother and older brother, moved from their home in a Detroit suburb to a “grubby half-acre” in the woods of Silver Lake, Michigan. As she helps unload the U-Haul, Cat meets Marlena Joyner, two years her senior, who lives nearby in “a renovated barn coated in layers of lilac paint that were sticky to the touch.”

Cat and Marlena become best friends. Their friendship lasts only a year, until Marlena “suffocated in less than six inches of ice-splintered river.” But it’s a life-changing year for Cat, one in which Marlena introduces her to a world very different from her accustomed environment. She encourages Cat, an excellent student in her previous school, to cut classes, drink heavily and take recreational drugs. And Marlena’s father is hardly a stabilizing influence; he cooks meth in a railcar behind their house.

Today, Cat has a prominent job in New York, but the effects of her Silver Lake years remain. She still struggles with alcoholism, and when Marlena’s younger brother, Sal, who was 8 when his sister died, calls Cat to say that he’s in town, events from a past she never quite forgot come rushing back.

Despite an error in chronology—YouTube, which figures into the narrative, wasn’t around 20 years ago—Marlena is still an unforgettable portrait of teenage confusion and experimentation, a time when one discovers “that time doesn’t belong to you. All you have is what you remember.”

 

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

From its brilliant opening sentence, “Tell me what you can’t forget, and I’ll tell you who you are,” Julie Buntin’s debut novel creates a hauntingly original atmosphere for a familiar story. In Marlena, a woman in her 30s recalls events from two decades earlier, when a brief friendship had a profound impact on her life.

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A lawyer by profession, Phillip Lewis has spent his life and career in North Carolina, and a keen sense of familiarity is the first thing the reader notices as his debut novel, The Barrowfields, opens in the tiny Appalachian mountain town of Old Buckram.

The year is 1939 when Henry Aster is born in this inconsequential place, and he realizes it as such as soon as he teaches himself to read at a very young age. All the books in Old Buckram aren’t enough to contain Henry’s curiosity, and he awaits the day he can leave and make himself into a great writer.

Henry does leave and Henry does write, but his vow never to return home is broken when his mother takes ill. With a pregnant wife and a law degree, Henry moves back to Old Buckram and buys the hauntingly big house on the hill where the irony of his life, his law career and most importantly his unfinished book slowly start to consume him.

Growing up in the meantime is Henry’s son, also called Henry. In awe of his father and his biggest fan, Henry grows up loving all the same things—classical music, piano, books. And just like his father, he too is unable to stray far from the demons he wants to escape.

The Barrowfields is part coming-of-age story, part homecoming and part exploration of unfulfilled dreams. The setting seems both nostalgically old-fashioned and richly immediate. Lewis writes with warmth, depth and honesty about the regrets of fathers and sons and the inexorable pull of home.

A lawyer by profession, Phillip Lewis has spent his life and career in North Carolina, and a keen sense of familiarity is the first thing the reader notices as his debut novel, The Barrowfields, opens in the tiny Appalachian mountain town of Old Buckram.

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Mysterious and lyrical, Jess Kidd’s first novel, Himself, introduces the inhabitants of a village in County Mayo, Ireland, after the return of its most unfortunate son. Kidd wraps readers up in her tale like a mother swaddling a child—only in this case, not for safekeeping. In the curious village of Mulderrig, nothing is as safe as it seems.

It’s April 1976. Mahony, orphaned in Dublin 26 years prior, has followed a note—penned on the back of a photograph of him and his mother—to the place of his birth and, possibly, his mother’s death. Back in 1950, the town branded his mum Orla a witch, a whore, an outcast. The many rumors about what happened to her persist, confusing Mahony in his search for truth.

Strange things begin to happen when the handsome, dark-eyed Mahony steps foot in Mulderrig. Like his mother before him, Mahony can see and talk to the dead. The town’s eccentric Mrs. Cauley senses this, as she has some otherworldly tricks up her own sleeve. To find out what happened to his mum, Mahony and the meddling Mrs. Cauley conduct interrogations of both the living and the dead. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it quickly becomes apparent that some people want Mahony gone, for good.

Moving between Mahony’s present and the village’s past, Himself is spun like a fairy tale and paced like a mystery told around a slowly fading campfire. Kidd is brilliant at setting the scene and painting it vividly with a twisted, comic voice. A Bogeyman haunts the forest, a protected island in the river only appears at low tide, and a holy well springs up in the middle of the priest’s library. Mahoney’s presence seems to trigger this and other chaos as it forces the villagers to deal with the demons they’ve tried to bury.

In Himself, the author revels in the magical and supernatural, deftly and often humorously melding superstition and folklore with real personal tragedy.

Mysterious and lyrical, Jess Kidd’s first novel, Himself, introduces the inhabitants of a village in County Mayo, Ireland, after the return of its most unfortunate son. Kidd wraps readers up in her tale like a mother swaddling a child—only in this case, not for safekeeping. In the curious village of Mulderrig, nothing is as safe as it seems.

Every lost item holds within it a story. Perhaps it was a treasured memento, or a useful item thoughtlessly left behind. Whatever the case, Anthony Peardew collects those items and the histories he imagines for them.

Anthony knows loss. His fiancée, Therese, gave him a communion medallion that depicted St. Therese of the Roses. It was a thank you for the rose garden he planted at what was to be their first home. “It’s for you, to say thank you for my beautiful garden and to remind you that I will love you forever, no matter what,” Therese said as she bestowed the gift. “Promise me you’ll keep it with you always.”

The day he lost it was the day she died.

Anthony began to collect lost items and write stories about their origins. His first story collection was a success, but as Anthony ages, his work becomes darker and his publisher displeased.

These lost objects are more than Anthony’s attempt at salvation after losing his love, and more than a publisher’s means to an end. When Anthony dies and leaves his collection to his assistant, Laura, she becomes the Keeper of Lost Things. Anthony leaves instructions: Laura should return the items to their rightful owners, in hopes that she’ll heal at least one heart. In the process, she befriends a neighbor and Anthony’s gardener. They become key to Laura’s own healing after a failed marriage.

As the trio works to reunite the items with their owners, they periodically encounter sadness—both their own and that which seems to accompany the objects themselves. That’s part of living, Laura’s young friend says. “If you never get sadness, how do you know what happiness is like?” In The Keeper of Lost Things, debut novelist Ruth Hogan ties together the lives of her characters and the objects they discover. It’s a quiet but beautifully intricate novel that will remind readers that we are each other’s points of connection. When life becomes confusing or sad, showing a bit of kindness and appreciation for each others’ stories can lead to redemption.

Every lost item holds within it a story. Perhaps it was a treasured memento, or a useful item thoughtlessly left behind. Whatever the case, Anthony Peardew collects those items and the histories he imagines for them. In The Keeper of Lost Things, debut novelist Ruth Hogan ties together the lives of her characters and the objects they discover. It’s a quiet but beautifully intricate novel that will remind readers that we are each other’s points of connection.

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