A new deli opened in our village at the end of last year – Gin & Pickles.  I love it very much and am a loyal customer already – coffee & cake in the morning, lunchtime platters of cold meats and cheese, and evenings filled with gin have already featured in my visits.  Let alone the huge quantities of take away items we acquire most weeks to enjoy back at home!  I thought I couldn’t love it any more – until I popped in the other day and the lovely owner, who’d seen a couple of friends recommend this book to me on social media, gave me her copy to borrow!  Gin, pickles – and books to borrow – practically heaven on earth?!?

I had high hopes for ‘The Keeper of Lost Things’ as lots of people had recommended it, so here’s the blurb:

“Meet the ‘Keeper of Lost Things’…
Once a celebrated author of short stories now in his twilight years, Anthony Peardew has spent half his life collecting lost objects, trying to atone for a promise broken many years before.

Realising he is running out of time, he leaves his house and all its lost treasures to his assistant Laura, the one person he can trust to fulfil his legacy and reunite the thousands of objects with their rightful owners.

But the final wishes of the ‘Keeper of Lost Things’ have unforeseen repercussions which trigger a most serendipitous series of encounters…”

My high hopes were not disappointed – it is a truly lovely book.

The relationships, initially between Laura and Anthony, but then between Laura, Freddy and Sunshine are great.  Reasonably predicable but the interactions develop in a lovely and endearing way, and you want the best for all of them.

The story of these characters – and the house, Padua, which is practically a character in itself, are interspersed with stories from decades earlier about seemingly unrelated characters called Eunice and Bomber.  You kind of guess they’re going to end up converging – but I didn’t work out exactly how this would happen until very near the end of the book (I won’t ruin it for you!) The chapters set in a care home – well, two different care homes – were particularly poignant, as my Nan has recently become a care home resident.

There are also stories in italics – which ‘could’ be how the items that Anthony has been collecting were lost – but for the bulk of the book you’re not quite sure if they are his imagination or actual facts.

It is not a difficult read – and you have to go with the coincidences, particularly at the end, but it’s a lovely, escapist, enchanting read – which I think would appeal to a cross section of all ages.

Sunshine is my favourite character – I’d like her to come round and make me ‘the lovely cup of tea’ and have a chat sometime.  (That will make sense once you’ve read the book!!)

This is fitting into my 2018 Reading Challenge category of “A book recommended by someone else taking the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge”. I’m getting a bit ahead of myself and have ticked off two of the advanced categories without doing all of the initial ones – but we shall be optimistic for the next 9 and a half months!