The Keeper of Lost Things

Ruth Hogan’s 2017 debut novel The Keeper of Lost Things is a romance infused with elements of the paranormal and the magical. Hogan, a career civil servant in the UK, was approaching 50 when the book was published. A prolonged recovery from a car accident and then a struggle with cancer gave her the opportunity to devote time to what had been her childhood passion for storytelling. A voracious reader, she had been writing short stories and outlining novels without finding publishing success since her time as a literature major at London’s Goldsmiths College. This book became a focus of appreciation on online reading clubs and in turn became a bestseller. In 2018, the novel was released in more than 30 countries, becoming an international bestseller. This study guide uses the 2017 HarperCollins paperback.

Plot Summary

The Keeper of Lost Things is a dual narrative that centers on two women, strangers to each other, whose parallel stories come together in the novel’s closing pages. In the contemporary narrative, Laura, a divorcee in her thirties reeling from the end of a long and difficult marriage to an abusive husband, answers an ad for a secretary for an elderly retired writer.