THE MEMORY COLLECTORS

What if people's emotions could be influenced by objects as trivial as a discarded button?

Harriet and Evelyn don't seem to have anything in common. Harriet is an older White woman whose apartment is bursting at the seams with boxes containing her collection of treasured objects. Ev is a young half-Chinese woman living in a sterile apartment who wears white gloves to avoid having to touch anything directly. When one of Harriet's neighbors puts a few boxes of Harriet's things in the dumpster outside, Ev digs through them, looking for items to sell at the flea market. Harriet arrives home, catching Ev, and the women realize they have something in common: a rare ability to recognize the emotions and memories imbued in certain everyday items. Harriet's and Ev’s different relationships to their gift (curse?) are captured by the word each woman uses to describe these special objects—for Harriet they are bright, and for Ev they are stained. Harriet is forced to vacate her apartment and thus reckon with her tremendous collection; she hires Ev to create a museum of treasures that will positively influence the emotions of its visitors: “They would gravitate to the objects that held the emotions they most needed, and without even realizing it, they would be filled up. Changed.” When Ev’s sister, Noemi, returns to town and the sisters confront their dark childhood, this plan becomes more complicated; Ev starts to realize her power is greater, and perhaps more dangerous, than she knew. In many respects the novel echoes Harriet’s overabundance, and Neville’s writing feels cluttered with characters and subplots that are underexplored. But the mysteries surrounding the two protagonists, and the originality of the novel’s central conceit—that we influence the objects around us with our emotions, and these objects in turn influence us—outweigh any faults.

Like the magical objects collected by its protagonists, this novel is emotionally transformative.