The Memory Collectors

I really enjoyed the premise of The Memory Collectors. We all have attachments and feel sentimental about certain things that we display in our homes, we may even feel a certain “energy/vibration” coming from them. I’m not one for having objects in my home, but I do decorate our home with pictures of travels, family get-togethers, birthdays, our son growing up, etc. These pictures hold so many memories and emotions. I’m sure the majority of us feel the same way when we look at pictures, and even pictures that play no part in our lives. After all, we take pictures to remember the feeling of that moment. Therefore, we can all relate to the emotional story Kim Neville has written in her debut novel.

Ev has a mysterious ability, one that she feels is more a curse than a gift. She can feel the emotions people leave behind on objects and believes that most of them need to be handled extremely carefully, and—if at all possible—destroyed. The harmless ones she sells at Vancouver’s Chinatown Night Market to scrape together a living, but even that fills her with trepidation. Meanwhile, in another part of town, Harriet hoards thousands of these treasures and is starting to make her neighbors sick as the overabundance of heightened emotions start seeping through her apartment walls.

When the two women meet, Harriet knows that Ev is the only person who can help her make something truly spectacular of her collection. A museum of memory that not only feels warm and inviting but can heal the emotional wounds many people unknowingly carry around. They only know of one other person like them, and they fear the dark effects these objects had on him. Together, they help each other to develop and control their gift, so that what happened to him never happens again. But unbeknownst to them, the same darkness is wrapping itself around another, dragging them down a path that already destroyed Ev’s family once, and threatens to annihilate what little she has left.

I had a bit of a hard time in the beginning of this story due to my own personality. I’m someone who does not like clutter, and this book deals with hoarding. I found myself itching to jump into the book and start cleaning everything. Instead, I was constantly cleaning and looking to purge items in my house every time I set the book down. However, after a bit I settled in, stopped cleaning, and began to enjoy the dialogue and plot.

This is a dark story that deals with the reality of hoarding with a bit of a magical/psychic realism. The beginning was a slow burn as I learned about Ev and Harriet. Two very different women who are able to sense emotions attached to objects. These emotions are remnants of the previous owner. From there the story picks up with twists and turns that kept me engaged. I found myself entranced as the story became darker and the two women finally come together to create something positive from the hordes of objects Harriet has collected over the years.

Overall, I liked the concept of feeling emotions in objects along with the magical realism woven in. Neville has crafted a beautifully written novel that tells the tales of memories, family and what is really important in life.

Thank you Atria for the gifted copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.