The Keeper of Lost Things: A Heartwarming Escape

I am writing this review because I feel obliged to understand why I abandoned the The Keeper of Lost Things after the first couple of chapters. I usually try to plow through any book I start because, as an artist, I understand the amount of effort, time and commitment that goes into publishing a book. Sometimes that time & effort is well spent and sometimes it is not, as appeared to be the case with The Keeper. So while I hesitate to show a lack of respect for the labour of writing, publishing and distributing a novel, I just couldn’t force myself to overcome my initial aversion to this one and read it to the end. Life’s too short to fritter away reading time when there are so many well-written novels by accomplished authors out there.

I try to give any novel the benefit of the doubt because I question my own capacity to be an informed evaluator of the written word. I’m just a visual artist who reads in my spare time. Though I did get 3/4 of the way toward a BA in English Literature a lifetime ago, I have forgotten how to apply analytical techniques. Prose either excites me or leaves me cold, so this blog is an attempt to understand what makes for good writing.

Art Appreciation

Not that experience or expertise in one art form is irrelevant when evaluating the success of another form. I’m a former dancer, so if I’m zoning out while watching dance, I scan to see whether the source of the problem is my own lack of attention or out there on the stage. If I’m struggling to stay awake, perhaps it’s because the rhythms or movements are repetitive and predictable, or the performers are not clear on what they are trying to say, or the idea is sophomoric and not worth saying. Dance that works is transcendent like no other art form, when dancers pierce the fourth wall in real time, in real space with real bodies. Technique is an important, as is charisma, presence, and talent, none of which can be faked on stage.

In an art gallery, my eyes skim over paintings that are like thousands of other paintings and not taking any chances, or are derivative and made to sell. Conversely, I find pieces annoying that repeat the same old ironic/angry/outraged, post-modern themes in an attempt to be relevant. Good painting, like good dancing, requires technical prowess (whatever the post-modernist, post-post-modernists, anti-artists, etc. might say), talent (which no amount of technical skill can supplant) and originality. So there are overlaps among the arts and a general understanding and appreciation of one form provides insights into others.

Sentimentality

In any discipline, one area fraught with danger is sentimentality. Images of nurturing mothers with children, happy carefree children, sad children or any children, really, are hazardous as they so easily tip into the maudlin. Images of old people can also be deadly if they rely on one-dimensional stereotypes: the kindly old man/woman/; the wise old man/woman; the old woman/man with a lifetime of regrets or one huge regret that must be resolved before her/his death, and so on.

Any character that is always kindly or always evil or always played on one note is not interesting and this is the sense I got from the first few chapters of The Keeper of Lost Things. The characters were not likely to reveal startling unexpected sides of themselves or take the trajectory of the story in a completely unanticipated direction. I must admit that the reviews on the back cover put me off: “it left me smiling”, “charming and gently moving”, and “heart warming”. I want insight, daring, and a unique and adventurous use of prose. I do not want heartfelt, heartbreak,heartwarming or the redemptive power of friendship. It is all just too cloying – too obviously designed to pluck the heartstrings with egregious sentimentality.

If the writing is unique, flamboyant and poetic I can forgive a writer for manipulating my emotions, but if it is also pedestrian, clunky and predictable, there can be no forgiveness. In the first few chapters of The Keeper, clichés abound, such as: “a safe pair of hands”, “weary to the bone”, “it had been their song”, “a lovely cup of tea”, “a prickle of anxiety”,”his presence always lifted her spirits”,”that whistle of the kettle pierced her reminiscence”. I could go on and on but I didn’t – I put down the book and returned it early to the library.

Sitting in Judgment

Still the doubts gnawed at me: What do I know? Who am I to judge? The Keeper was nominated for Goodreads’ Best Fiction 2017, and 41,766 readers gave it 5 stars. One reviewer described it as, “…a little lacy, dressy, decorous, cultivated, rosy, sweet, courteous, cordial, romantic, a little mysterious, quirky, touching, sad, humorous, warm, cozy, and loving”. Another “…an enchanting story about love, loss, friendship, and healing. A wonderful cast of endearing, quirky characters made this book a pleasure to read!” How can I say that the point of the novel is not to create heart-warming, heart-felt stories where everything is warm, cozy and loving?

Zadie Smith

So I turned to Zadie Smith, an award-winning writer, for some insight into what makes good writing. In an article in The Guardian, Smith argued that fiction should be “not a division of head and heart, but the useful employment of both”. A good novel doesn’t just tug at the heartstrings it engages the mind. But as one reader said about The Keeper, “…it is a heartwarming escape. Not every book has to be critically reviewed for style and all kinds of other attributes…”. I’m realizing that readers are divided into those who read to employ head and heart and those who want to escape into an easy, feel-good world. So if tens of thousands of readers are happy with escapist fiction, rather than plots that make you think and virtuostic writing, I will leave them to it and spend my precious reading time devouring the best literature I can find.

The best novels have dialogue that rings true. In her collection of essays, Feel Free, Smith talks about, …”that trick of breathing what–looks–like–life into a collection of written sentences….it really is a sort of magic. I like writing that makes you hear voices.” Where this magic is lacking, less dedicated authors rely on repeating what others have written time and time again, rather than experiencing and transcribing the voices real people.

Here’s Smith on author Paula Fox. “A fresh crop of writers sought a way of writing “around–the-house–and–in–the–yard” fiction…A new domestic realism: unsentimental yet vivid….”. While there is a plethora of “around–the-house” stories, they fail to seem real if told through a lens of sentiment. Fox explains her gift thus: “I can see”, and this does appear to be the crucial ingredient in good writing. Not a soft-focus lens on life but a 50-1350 mm zoom.

Smith quotes E. M. Forster: “she gave up trying to understand herself, and joined the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch words”. Smith contrasts this with the writing of Edward St. Aubyn, “…it’s a joy. Oh, the semi-colons, the discipline! Those commas so perfectly placed, so rhythmic, creating sentences loaded and blessed, almost o’erbrimmed, and yet sturdy, never in danger of collapse. It’s like fingering a beautiful swatch of brocade…”. While no one could accuse St. Aubyn of heartfelt, heartwarming prose, his writing is a gorgeous fabric of colourful threads even as he takes the reader on a torturous and frightening route through the human psyche.

Smith discriminates between the real world, “where we often want our judgments and moral decisions to be swift and singular and decisive”, and fiction that, “messes with our sense of what it is possible to do with our judgments. It usefully suspense our great and violent desire to be in the right on every question….” This accords with my empirical observation that good writing forces even the less introspective among us, such as myself, to question our assumptions and open our minds to new ways of thinking. It creates hairline cracks in our most dearly-held stereotypes and prejudices, in this way paving the way toward social change, or at least a more conscious readership. And surely this is the point of the arts, to act as a conduit for greater awareness, rather than as a soother.