Kim Neville's first novel, The Memory Collectors, is a feat of characterization and plot, as well as an intriguing consideration of the enormous significance objects and places can hold for people.
Evelyn is a young adult in Vancouver, socially isolated, making a living by picking through recycling bins and alley discards for items to sell at the Chinatown Night Market. Her relationship with her little sister, Noemi, is fractured. Their family experienced a tragedy that for much of the book remains unclear. And then there is Harriet, an older woman with a hoarding problem and a mysterious connection to Ev. They share an ability to read an object's emotional associations by touch or proximity, but they have very different feelings about this gift--or curse. Ev hides from things she thinks of as "stained," living in new and undecorated spaces, and moving often as her own feelings settle in. Harriet collects the things she thinks of as "bright," filling the spaces around her with borrowed emotions until she makes her neighbors ill with "the soft, scrambled buzz of thousands of stains." Harriet hopes to use her collection to heal, with Ev's help. But Ev may know better just how dangerous a brooch or a balsawood glider can be.
The Memory Collectors is a remarkable piece of magical realism, imaginative and vivid in its specificity. Seemingly trivial items offer enormous symbolic opportunities. Tender, electric, this story and its vibrant characters will stay with readers long after the pages have closed. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia