Worth Keeping: Book Review

Review of The Keeper of Stories by Sally Page

by Theresa Gauthier

Every once in awhile a reader comes across a story that looks good, that you expect to be an enjoyable read, but when you get around to reading it, you realize it’s a lot more than that. Sally Page’s The Keeper of Stories looks like the sort of story I’d enjoy. Reading the synopsis, I couldn’t help but think, yeah, that’s for me. It wasn’t until I’d actually read it that I realize this seemingly unassuming little read packs a lot more between the lines than I’d imagined.

The premise is that a woman named Janice who works as a cleaner collects stories. Meaning she listens to and collects the stories that she hears and remembers them. She doesn’t write them down and she has a number of rules about them—one being that there is only one story per person.

Janice doesn’t think about her own story, and when someone asks about it, she’s flummoxed. Unsure how to answer, she wonders about her collecting and her rules, and she manages to make real connections to several of her clients. 

It’s her own story that haunts her. She doesn’t talk about it. She doesn’t share it. Unsure if her sister remembers it correctly, she finds herself worried when her sister makes a reference to it that she finds unclear and more than a little unsettling. She should say something. Miscommunication or the complete lack of communication is a recurring theme.

Through much of the book, she is trying to maintain a clear line between her home life and her professional life while making sure her clients’ needs are met. The main problem here is that she’s married to a man who’s always looking for work, always alienating his coworkers, and always getting himself fired. 

Lines begin to blur as Janice starts getting more and more involved with people, caring about them, and making friends where she might have thought better about it before. Befriending a woman and her son who have suffered a tragedy, another elderly woman who’s trying to hold onto her past, and another client who’s kind offer in a stressful circumstances gives Janice a chance at changing her life. 

Connections, reconnections, family and friends—but what it all boils down to is communication. Again and again it becomes obvious that miscommunications, misunderstanding, and misinterpretations are the things that cause the most pain. Given a chance to make things better—for herself and for others—can Janice do it, or will she sink back into the familiar because it’s familiar? Talking will always clear things up, but Janice isn’t good at that. She’s a listener, a collector of stories, not someone who tells people what she thinks. 

Janice’s own story isn’t what you might think it is, but in daring to change it, she can make it better and start a new chapter.