3 Sentence The Keeper Of Lost Things Summary
The Keeper of Lost Things is Ruth Hogan’s debut novel which came out in 2017. The novel is a romance infused with elements of the paranormal and the magical. It had a bit of everything I enjoy in a book – romance, ghostly presences, magic, mystery, and clever literary references.
Summary Read Time: Less than 4 minutes
Actual Book Length: 288
First Published in: 2017
Below is the detailed yet quick The Keeper Of Lost Things book summary:
The Keeper Of Lost Things Summary: Part 1
Ruth Hogan’s novel tells the story of two women who are strangers to each other, but whose lives become intertwined. In the contemporary narrative, Laura, a divorcee in her thirties, answers an ad for a secretary for an elderly retired writer. She is still reeling from the end of her marriage to an abusive husband, and she is hoping that this new job will help her get her life back on track.
Anthony Peardew is the keeper of lost things. Forty years ago, he accidentally lost a memento from his fiancée, Therese. The same day she died unexpectedly. He lives in semi-seclusion in a rambling Victorian home in central London. Anthony has dedicated his life to a single mission: He gathers objects he finds carelessly dropped by others—everyday things that may hold sentimental value to those who lost them. His study is a museum of these lost things, each carefully tagged and accrued across more than 40 years.
Over the course of six years working for Anthony, Laura deepens her friendship with him and comes to know his backstory. She also gets to know his abiding love for Therese, a beautiful woman killed in a car accident days before they were to be married nearly 40 years earlier.
After the tragic car accident that took Anthony’s parents, he was given his mother’s First Communion medallion by Therese. In the chaos, Anthony dropped the medallion in the street and never recovered it. This tragedy led him to dedicate his life to finding lost things. Years later, when he finds a cookie tin containing human cremains, he feels death suddenly near. That night, he dies, leaving his home to Laura with the request that she continue his work.
The Keeper Of Lost Things Summary: Part 2
Laura enlists the help of a teenaged neighbor nicknamed Sunshine who has Down syndrome and whose good cheer helps Laura. Sunshine appears gifted with intuition that allows her special sympathy for others and the ability to sense paranormal activity. In addition, Laura befriends Anthony’s hulky, no-nonsense gardener, Freddy, who becomes her first lover since her marriage. These three people help Laura through a tough time in her life and teach her some valuable lessons along the way.
The three hold a garden ceremony involving Anthony’s ashes. The purpose of the ceremony is to celebrate Anthony’s reunion with Therese. Laura keeps noticing evidence in the house that suggests to her (and to Sunshine) that the ghost of Therese is angry.
The story of Eunice begins in the 1970s when she was hired as a secretary to a London publisher named Bomber, who was 20 years her senior. On the day of her interview, Eunice found a medallion on the street outside the office and decided to keep it. Over the course of her employment, she fell in love with Bomber, even though she realized he was gay. Eunice agrees to help bomber commit suicide when his dementia worsens, as he dislikes his sister Portia.
Three years later, Bomber calls in his promise, and Eunice dreads the memorial service Portia is throwing for him. To prevent this, Eunice fills an urn with cookies and gravel, and puts the ashes in a cookie tin to scatter at Bomber’s beloved Brighton beach. However, she leaves the tin on the train. Anthony recovers it.
In the closing pages, Laura and Freddy set up a website to help trace the owners of lost things. Eunice uses the website to find the owner of the ashes she found, as well as to return a medallion she picked up in the street after a car accident decades earlier. Laura recognizes the medallion as Therese’s long-lost medallion.
At last, Therese is at peace, Laura and Freddy have vowed to continue Anthony’s work. They are engaged and have decided to pursue Laura’s dream of being a writer. She types the first line of a story about cremains in a cookie tin left on a London train. This is the same first line of the novel we have been reading.
