The things that stab at our imagination are often the things we wish weren’t true.
Rowan Taylor’s THE MEMORY KEEPER is a psychological gothic novel that centers on Mara, an archivist, and her job at the haunted Dumont Mansion. What starts as an opportunity for her to escape the noise of the outside world and self-isolate soon turns into a haunting when she encounters strange occurrences (such as a fully stocked kitchen in a long-abandoned house) and starts receiving letters from a brain-dead former lover.
Her main task is to catalog, arrange, and archive information about the Dumont family history. However, this strange mansion has something else in store for her, and she is soon driven down a path she is unprepared for. Forced to confront her past while fighting for survival in a house that seems intent on digging deep into her memories, she must either face the ghosts of her past or risk losing herself.
While at the mansion, she meets an insidious entity capable of rewriting memories. In this mansion, where the walls seem to have a mind of their own and the veil between the dead and the living is stretched thin, she quickly learns that what is forgotten may be lost forever.
The use of the exploration of memory as a battleground for power is where THE MEMORY KEEPER excels. Mara’s fear of being rewritten and silenced is used as a metaphor for real-world issues, such as gaslighting in abusive relationships and the erosion of personal history in trauma. Taylor adds emotional weight to these ideas when she draws from Mara’s romantic roots to make the horror feel intimately personal. Secondary elements, such as the estate’s spectral history tied to a tragic figure named Isabelle, add layers of detail to the story that highlight how love can quickly mutate into something monstrous.
Beyond the surface, it also touches on the grief of losing loved ones, who may not be quite literally dead but are lost to mental and psychological illness: “They were all ghosts in plain sight—dead, or present but unreachable. Diminished. Clinging to whatever scraps remained. And Mara understood now—painfully, intimately—what it meant to linger in that in-between. To still be breathing but no longer known. To be told you’re still here when what they meant was you no longer count.”
Despite its strengths, the story falters in execution. Mostly in the area of pacing, as the early chapters seem to drag with lots of repetitive descriptions of the estate’s gloom that border on atmospheric overkill. Reliance on ambiguity, such as the entity’s origins and motivations (which remain vague), leaves key plotlines unresolved. Additionally, the blend of horror and romance occasionally feels forced, with romantic undertones that clash with the darker themes. Moments of tenderness amid the terror can seem contrived and a bit out of place, including dreamlike interactions with a past lover who is clearly not there.
Overall, THE MEMORY KEEPER still succeeds in telling an intriguing story about the importance of memory and remembrance—which is quite often all we have left to cling to after the death of loved ones.
Rowan Taylor’s THE MEMORY KEEPER is an eerily atmospheric novel that draws readers into Mara’s journey.
~ Gabriella Harrison for IndieReader