THE MUSEUM OF FORGOTTEN MEMORIES
Anstey Harris
Simon & Schuster
REVIEWED BY WILLIE CAMPBELL
The secrets hidden in once grand houses of titled and privileged English folk are a fertile field for novelists.
Anstey Harris has explored this field and used her descriptive skills and rich vocabulary to carry her reader through conjecture, memory, family history, redundancy, poverty and the tangles of village life and the beneficence of great-granddad Colonel Hugo Lyons-Morris, founder of the Hatters Museum of the Wide Wide World.
Also in residence is Miss Araminta Buchan, who is most reluctant to have family nearby and makes it clear that the museum is on its last legs and is likely to face closure in a matter of weeks. The relationship between the two women is pivotal to the tension and unfolding of the story, its family background, village history and eventual resolution.
Harris’s descriptions of the impact on Cate of the approach to the building and the contents of the museum rooms establishes the mood of the tale. Always she is accompanied by the ghost of her late husband, whose childhood home this was, and her concern for the future of Leo, who has Down’s Syndrome.
In delicate increments, history unravels, in parallel to demands of the present, the museum and its functioning or lack thereof. A cast of contrasting local characters are ever present and all are so grateful to have a family member back living in the museum.
Two highly evocative chapters built around a fire and consequent morphine-heavy hospital stay for Cate are the breakthrough in terms of relationships and future possibilities. They secure the narrative. The fire, its total voluntary village damage clean up, and the resultant publicity from a magazine cover photo and solid investigative story becomes the grand event the museum needs. A satisfying piece of team work from Cate and Araminta provides an unanticipated resolution.
Willie Campbell is a Dunedin educator
