The Museum of Forgotten Memories

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. (Nov.)