The Museum of Forgotten Memories

September 1, 2020
An eccentric museum in a neglected, stately English home becomes a heart-opening site of revelation, renewal, and second chances for a widow and her son. A broken heart, a guilty conscience, a special needs child, homelessness, and joblessness are just the starting points for Harris' busily plotted second novel, which draws inspiration from a real Victorian curiosity of a museum in southern England, where the author grew up. Enjoyably readable but overloaded, the narrative puts 54-year-old Cate Morris, still missing her husband, Richard, who died four years earlier by suicide, through the emotional wringer. Forced to relocate from London with Leo, her 19-year-old son, who has Down syndrome, Cate turns up at Hatters Museum of the Wide Wide World, where Richard's long-dead grandfather, Colonel Hugo, assembled an extraordinary collection of stuffed animals and other artifacts harvested on trips to Africa and Asia. The museum is under threat, and Cate will try to save it, but her efforts are complicated by skeptical trustees, animal rights activists, a fire, and the inscrutable activities of an old retainer with links to the colonel. Cate's emotional roller coaster swoops through bursts of introspection and self-recrimination interspersed with happier episodes with Leo and also Patch, a local artist and surprisingly ardent new lover. These mood swings, from grief and regret to rebirth and fairy tale--like the whistle-while-you-work team of locals that arrives to restore Hatters to order after the fire or Leo's heroic speech to the nasty trustees--generate an unpredictability of tone, but Harris' tale-spinning is good enough to keep the forward momentum going, often at breakneck speed. That a conclusion will be reached and that it will be satisfying are never in doubt. The clouds of a formulaic setup disperse to reveal a charmingly clear blue sky.

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Starred review from September 1, 2020
A family's peculiar museum becomes a surprising source of renewal and hope for a grief-stricken widow and her son in the latest from British writer Harris (Goodbye Paris, 2018). After the loss of her teaching job threatens to leave them homeless, Cate Morris and her special-needs son are forced to seek refuge at her late husband's estate, which includes an obscure Victorian museum in a small English village. Their arrival revives a dormant, much-needed interest in the struggling museum, but Cate is haunted by events that led to her husband's suicide, and she can't manage to see eye-to-eye with the cantankerous old woman who manages the estate. Her 19-year old son, Leo, who has Down syndrome, is able to make friends with the local townspeople, and Cate slowly finds purpose and even a potential romantic partner. With the demands of the museum and her own happiness hanging in the balance, Cate secures a surprising reprieve as she learns more about the history of the museum, the community where it resides, and her pivotal role in all of it. Harris' moving and leisurely paced story of fate and grief examines the lingering consequences that shackle those who feel that they have no advantages to speak of.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

September 14, 2020
Harris’s tepid latest (after Goodbye, Paris) concerns a London schoolteacher and the travails she faces after being laid off. With nowhere else to go, Cate Morris and her 19-year-old son, Leo, who has Down syndrome, move into a museum owned by the family of Leo’s late father, Richard, in rural Crouch-on-the-Sea. Cate and museum caretaker Araminta immediately get off on the wrong foot: Araminta is standoffish, and Cate is horrified by the museum taxidermy. She eventually comes around to Araminta and sees an opportunity to revitalize the museum, and her schemes to attract visitors are met with joy and controversy. Cate takes an instant dislike to Leo’s new friend Curtis, who smokes pot when he’s not tending to the museum grounds. She also falls for Patch, a handsome artist. Both, however, give her reasons to rethink her opinions of them. With an unappreciative board eager to shut down the museum, Cate and Araminta cooperate to save it, leading Araminta to reveal a big secret. Harris’s scenes of discord, such as Cate’s bad feeling about Araminta and her habit of threatening other characters with unwarranted calls to the police, fail to earn the intended sympathy from readers, and the plot disappointingly relies on a deus ex machina resolution. The flaws are plentiful enough to undermind the set-up’s otherwise promising potential.

October 1, 2020

DEBUT NOVEL Cate Morris is at the end of her rope. She's been laid off from her teaching position, and her London flat has been sold out from under her just when she needs its stability for herself and her 19-year-old son Leo, who has Down syndrome. She's forced into moving to the only place left, Leo's legacy from her late husband, Richard. Hatters Museum of the Wide Wide World, in tiny, remote Crouch-on-Sea, is filled with taxidermy animals. But Hatters is in tatters, as is Cate's life. Faced with the museum's irascible caretaker and imminent closure, not to mention the unwelcoming villagers, Cate and Leo get caught up in the lies that bind the town and the family together, weighed down by a legacy that will be either the making or the breaking of them. VERDICT Short story writer Harris's debut novel is recommended for readers who like their relationship fiction on the literary side.--Marlene Harris, Reading Reality, LLC, Duluth, GA

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