The Memory Collectors

November 9, 2020
Neville debuts with a tense meditation on trauma, family, and inheritance. Strangers Evelyn and Harriet both possess the ability to sense emotions and memories attached to certain objects. For Evelyn, it’s a terrifying burden: her father, who had the same power, became murderous after too much contact with objects that had hateful auras. For Harriet, “bright objects” are the only comforts in her reclusive, paranoid life, and she uses her vast wealth to hoard them. After a chance encounter, Harriet hires Evelyn to help her transform her collection into a museum of memory. Meanwhile, Evelyn works to provide a stable home for her chaotic younger sister, Noemi—even as Noemi pries deeper into the dark secrets of their family’s past. Harriet and Evelyn are elegant foils for one another, allowing Neville to unpack dysfunctional memory from different angles. Unfortunately, the pervasive undercurrent of anxiety quickly becomes oppressive and both the magic and the characters feel underbaked. Fans of introspective fabulism will love the concept, but others will find this thin. Agent: Taylor Haggerty and Melanie Castillo, Root Literary.

January 1, 2021
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.

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February 15, 2021
Evelyn understands more than most that every object has a story. Since she was young, Ev could feel the emotions contained in an item--the love, happiness, grief, sadness, scorn, resentment, and even danger or hatred. She has learned to live with these feelings, or "stains," and even figured out how to make a living by selling the objects that contain them. Ev's father was the only other person she knew with the ability, until she meets Harriet with her collection of "bright" objects. Together the two women transform Harriet's collection into a "museum of memories," hoping to share the brightness with others. But when Ev learns that Harriet is connected to her tragic past, each woman is pushed to the edge before the truth can emerge from beneath the secrets. Neville's debut novel delivers a unique and intriguing mystery, reminding readers that what most see as trash, a few see as treasure. Objects, like people, have a history and can be cherished, bring people joy or sorrow, and be full of darkness and light.

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