The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan

Hogan's debut novel was the March selection for the Inspired by Reading book club. It's the story of a man who collected and stored all the lost things he found throughout his life, in an attempt to compensate for the treasured item he himself lost long ago, and his personal assistant who's tasked with figuring out how to return as many items as possible to their original owners. The assistant herself is a bit lost, struggling to restart her life after the end of her disappointing marriage.

I liked the concept of the story quite a bit -- I am a bit of a magpie myself, and the brief stories associated with the items were fascinating. I also greatly appreciated the fact that Sunshine, a young woman with Down Syndrome, was a character with her own role in the story rather than an object lesson in tolerance for the protagonists.  But there was also a fair amount of uncertainty in Hogan's writing, perhaps because it is her first book. She didn't seem to quite know how much of a supernatural element to add to the narrative, and she wavered between showing the two antagonists as cartoonish villains and deeply flawed humans.

On to the jewelry! I was tempted to make a little mixed media work of the different stories in the novel, but I simply didn't have time. The image of the lost blue button stuck in my mind, however (probably because I love buttons), and I soon remembered I had a silver puzzle piece charm in my stash -- a fitting symbol for both the actual puzzle piece in the story and the mystery of the lost things in general. I added a Venetian glass bead reminiscent of the roses that recur throughout the book. I strung the resulting bundle on pink leather cord.

I'm now kind of wishing I had strung a silver bead or two on each side of the charm bundle, but it's too late now! Maybe I'll come up with something else I can attach.

Jewelry Round-Up

Tassel necklaces are trendy, so who am I to resist? I didn't have enough beads to go all the way around, though, so I'm not entirely thrilled with the result.

My husband gave me this leather wrap bracelet for Christmas:

I love the charm, but more is more so I punched some extra holes (the bracelet was also too big) and added a couple of vintage milagros, a green bead that is a tiny image of the Virgin Mary, and a quartz chip that looks like a coarse grain of salt.

I bought a kit to crochet three bangles in the best colors ever (don't look too closely at the first one I made; this kind of bead crochet took a while to get the hang of).

I love these bracelets so much I made matching earrings -- brick stitch with loops instead of the traditional fringe.

Instagram is filled with lovely spring bracelets made from a motley of pastel stones, so I made my own (although my bead stash leans more towards bright colors).

Declare by Tim Powers

It makes me angry that books like Dan Brown's novels and the Left Behind series are massively popular, while something as brilliant as Tim Powers's Declare goes unnoticed by the public at large. Declare is a spy thriller with a supernatural twist, involving secret groups, devious plans, dangerous men (and women), political intrigue, magic, and faith, all told in Powers's smart, thoughtful, engaging prose.

Powers specializes in so-called "secret history" narratives -- he heavily researches events, people, and periods that interest him and then crafts a story that is meticulously accurate in its historical details but fills in the gaps, so to speak, with an overarching plot straight from his imagination. In this case, He weaves together the true history of the notorious double agent Kim Philby, Communist Russia, and the English Secret Service, but gives them all a secret motive involving ancient beings and the promise of unlimited power and eternal life.

 And that's not it -- Powers tosses in World War II, Arabic mythology,* Bible stories, Lawrence of Arabia, spycraft, radio technology, and the Heaviside layer (and here I thought it was Cat Heaven). The result is a fascinating story that I did not want to end. Some of Powers's insights on faith and fear had me gasping out loud.  The ending is wonderfully satisfying in a low-key way, befitting a novel which is skeptical of power and might and calls on the characters to decide what they really believe in. I cannot recommend this book enough, and I look forward to rereading it (after I read even more of Powers's work).



*Reading both Declare and City of Brass has made me aware of how limited Western education can be. Like many other literature-loving Americans, I know a whole lot about Greek mythology, English folklore, Germanic fairy tales, and the Christian Bible. But I know almost nothing of Arabic culture and folklore, pre- and post-Islam, and I wonder how much I haven't quite understood in these two novels as a result.

Book Round-Up: Bibliomysteries Edition

The Mysterious Bookshop in downtown Manhattan is publishing a Bibliomystery series, short stories or novellas by various mystery writers that center around a book, bookstore, or library. When I went for my birthday, I picked up a few.

The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository by John Connolly: this was a fun little story about a bookish accountant who stumbles upon a special library housing not only first editions, but a number of characters from those books that have come to life -- shades of Eileen Favorite's The Heroines and Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair.

The Book of the Lion by Thomas Perry: A lost Chaucerian manuscript is being held hostage by a nefarious character, and a professor and his billionaire friend try to claim the manuscript before it is destroyed forever. It was entertaining, but I think I would have preferred a longer work, and more time spent on the lost manuscript (it apparently did exist at one point).

The Little Men by Megan Abbott: This story mostly takes place in the former apartment of a bookseller, but it ultimately was a psychological thriller that had little to do with books.

Reconciliation Day by Christopher Fowler: I liked this one a lot (no surprise, I like Fowler's Peculiar Crimes series, too).  It involves the original manuscript to Stoker's Dracula, and is appropriately creepy and weird.

Seven Years by Peter Robinson: of all the ones I read, this one was probably closest to a traditional mystery -- a cryptic inscription in an old book leads to an unsolved death and a missing person. It had a distinctly Christie-ish vibe.

Bibliotheca Classica by Simon Brett: The choice of a deeply unreliable narrator made this a lot of fun to read. Professor Rounsevell is curious to discover the origins of his bowdlerized copy of the Bibliotheca Classica, but being both a snob and a technophobe he leaves most of the work to his long-suffering wife. I was tickled to learn that the more common name for the text is Lempriere's Dictionary, which is the title of a (disappointing) Lawrence Norfolk book I read ages ago.