The Keeper of Lost Things

Laura’s emotional and psychological redemption is made possible in large part through her growing relationship with her neighbor Sunshine, a bright and engaging teenager who shows Laura the rewards of trust and the benefits of friendship. Sunshine’s introduction into the narrative shortly after Anthony’s death enlivens the narrative. Her brash and unapologetic immediacy shatters the staid museum-like calm of Padua. She speaks her mind. She asks questions Laura would rather not confront. She is curious, eager to know about Anthony and his collection of lost objects. Initially, Laura, herself socially awkward and distrustful of others, finds Sunshine’s immediacy disconcerting, even physically hiding in a pantry closet to avoid opening the front door to Sunshine. Sunshine’s sunny disposition, unfiltered honesty, and sense of trust are exactly what Laura needs.

Although the reader may suspect when Sunshine first introduces herself to Laura, the narrative does not confirm until much later that this happy and engaging young woman has Down syndrome. The Keeper of Lost Things does not treat Down syndrome with documentary realism. Hogan does not explore the challenges the patients and their families face. Sunshine’s disability, rather, is used thematically. Sunshine’s warm immediacy is juxtaposed against Laura’s clear insulation against the present and the possibility of its disappointments, its heartaches, and its anxieties. Sunshine embraces life; Laura insulates herself from it.

More intriguing, Sunshine’s unguarded openness and refreshing sense of honesty are used here to suggest that because of that genetic disorder, she is tuned to a kind of magical intuition, an inexplicable ability to respond to objects and people in ways that others cannot. She does not reject the paranormal. She understands the lingering anguish of the long dead Therese. She embraces the assorted paranormal events that interrupt the day at Padua. She picks up objects in Anthony’s collection and physically feels the emotional pain of the person who lost the object. She intuits the importance of the lost Communion medallion. Sunshine is no clairvoyant. Rather, her condition allows her to engage life without layers of caution and preconceptions. Down syndrome is used to suggest the ability to respond openly and deeply to the world, a gift she gives Laura.

The Keeper of Lost Things is a ghost story. The environment—the roomy Victorian mansion with lots of rooms and a distinctively haunted feel—sets the scene for a ghost story. Events in the novel cannot be explained either logically or scientifically. The door to the bedroom Anthony and Therese once shared, which now serves as a sort of shrine to her memory, is found locked from the inside. A framed photograph shatters into pieces. An expensive pen appears in a tin of cookies. An upstairs bed is found scattered with rose petals. An old gramophone player plays in the middle of the night. Later, the same gramophone simply stops, in essence refusing to play. In the nights after Anthony’s death, Laura sees a shadowy figure crossing the rose garden.

It is Sunshine who matter-of-factly accepts the idea of the paranormal, while Laura comes to engage with what she cannot entirely explain. Like love, a ghost, the narrative suggests, is plausible as long as faith is placed in a reality not definable by logic or science. The spooky events in the novel each verify the presence of a lingering spirit, the ghost of Anthony’s dead lover Therese. Decades after her death, Therese is heartbroken, still determined to recover the Communion medallion she entrusted to Anthony’s care just hours before she was killed. Her ghost does not represent some terrifying presence or some wicked agency of vengeance. Rather, ghosts symbolize the lingering impact of the past. Therese is not, as Laura supposes, angry. Like Laura herself, Therese is inconsolable because she clings to loss. The peace that comes to the ghost of Therese with the restoration of her lost medallion symbolizes Laura’s own hard-earned redemption, when under the tonic influence of her love for Freddy she decides to let go of the pain and losses and embrace the present. 

In a novel that explores the talismanic power that otherwise ordinary objects can come to possess, none is more central to the story of both Anthony’s and Laura’s redemption than Therese’s small, round Catholic medallion. It bears the image of St. Therese of the Roses framed in simple gold. It was a gift to Therese to mark her First Communion, a Catholic sacrament that marks the coming of age of a Catholic child. Therese presents the medallion to Anthony on the eve of their wedding when he shares with her the beautiful rose garden he has planted for her on the grounds of Padua. For her, the gift of the medallion, which is so important to her, symbolizes the bond with the man she loves: “Promise me,” she whispers, “that you will keep it with you always” (53). He loses it days later in the confusion following Therese’s death in the car accident.

Offered at a moment of intimacy as the young lovers prepare to begin their life together, the medallion is more than just a token of the young love between Therese and Anthony. The medallion is associated with religion, specifically the Catholic ritual of Communion. The Communion liturgy marks the Church’s faith in the spiritual dimension as a reality. Catholics believe that the wafer they consume at Communion is the sacred body and blood of Christ, not a symbol of it. As such, the medallion represents love that is not defined or limited by the senses or by simple physical presence. The loss of the medallion in the streets of London is Anthony’s life tipping point. It shapes his lifelong mission to recover lost objects, to “gather them and keep them safe” (52), his confirmation that objects possess a spiritual dimension. The Communion medallion, like Communion itself, is a reminder that the world is more than what we can see. As such, it symbolizes that love is eternal.