The Keepsake [Paperback]

Kirsty Gunn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 11, 1998

In hypnotic and mesmerizing language, Kirsty Gunn explores the dark world of a young girl who has grown up with a mother dependent on storytelling and the oblivion of addiction to cope with the memory of lost love, the girl's father. Raised on deceptive tales of happiness, the younger woman is drawn into and begins to relive the real story of pain, abandonment, and the tyranny of desire. As her life spirals out of control, the tangled yarn of her mother's past begins to unravel, until finally she can come to tell a story that is her own. This luminous and disturbing novel reveals the terrible intimacy of family love and the redemptive power of storytelling.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Keepsake is a strange, hypnotic book, a tale of sexual obsession dressed in such beautiful language that the reader is swept into its universe willing or not. Kirsty Gunn is fearless, wading into such unsavory topics as imprisonment, rape, torture, and incest to tell the story of a nameless female narrator caught up in the obsessions of an aging psychotic. The book begins with the memory of a beautiful café, but whether the memory belongs to the young woman or to her mother is difficult to tell. The narrator seems to be assuming her mother's life, her own memories jumbling with those of her mother, from the café she had frequented to the destructive love affair she embarked upon.

Memories of mother bleed into the history of the narrator's own disastrous affair, and, as the details pile up in phantasmagoric prose, it becomes increasingly probable that the man to whom she surrenders her body and her will is the same man her mother loved--her father. The Keepsake is a disturbing novel, a garden of perversions made weirdly compelling by the author's unheated approach. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Gunn (Rain, LJ 2/15/95) creates a sensation akin to drifting under the influence of a powerful drug. The writing flows beautifully and deliciously, gradually revealing a tale of obsession, addiction, and abuse. The narrator is the daughter of a lovely (and nameless) young woman who fled her abusive father by eloping with an equally abusive husband. "Like all the frightened women who run frantically towards the future...all they meet is memory." After her husband leaves, the woman escapes into drugs and dreams but manages to maintain a deep and strong connection with her daughter. Raised on tales of passion and abandonment, the daughter knows nothing else and eventually replicates her mother's life. "Repeating is a truth of nature, like one flat cloud forming in the sky after its sister. They are not identical, but in the blue sky they are the same." The story is disturbing until the end, when redemption seems within reach. Recommended for public libraries.?Kimberly G. Allen, networkMCI Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1st Grove Press Pbk. Ed edition (March 11, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802135595
• ISBN-13: 978-0802135599
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,999,648 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful prose for an ugly, very uncomfortable subject., January 1, 2003

By 

Dana H. Pasterjak "Dana" (Palm Coast, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Keepsake (Paperback)

I agree completely with the previous reviewer that stated that they were not sure they "enjoyed" this book. However, it was extremely well-written in an enchanting, dream-like style. It lulls you in and then bangs you over the head with it's subject matter of abuse, confinement, imprisonment, rape, torture and drug-use. Not comfortable subject matter, but is life always comfortable and happy? I don't think any author today is as powerful as Kirsty Gunn to make such an ugly and horribly macabre story so compelling and interesting. Isn't that what good authors do? They seduce you by excellent writing to visit another world, completely different and unique and yes, horrible to fathom.

I preferred Rain, Gunn's first novel. Rain was also a painful, but well-written read about an uncomfortable subject matter. I find her writing poetic and beautiful and yes, carthritic. An amzazing talent and two truly hypnotic novels: The Keepsake and Rain. Don't miss either novel from this extraordianaryly talented young muse.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dreamlike, bewildering, December 10, 2002

By 

bonsai chicken (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Keepsake (Paperback)

I'm almost not sure what to make of this novel. It is, ostensibly, about a young girl's journey to adulthood under the influence of a mother who only partially exists in the real world. Her father is absent, although she hears much about him, and some of it may be true. The girl's narration shifts from her present to her mother's past until they seem to become one, the implication being that she is travelling down the same road as her mother once did.

Gunn's prose is beautiful, almost verging on poetry. While this style struck a perfect balance in her previous masterpiece, RAIN, it's well out of control here. She is deliberately vague throughout, and it's detrimental to the storytelling. She also tends to belabor scenes endlessly. When you read fifty pages, you should feel that the story has progressed in some fashion.

By the time the book reached its shocking, violent climax, I felt lost. Perhaps I didn't grasp what was truly happening -- like a dream, it feels only just out of reach.

5.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing, hypnotic, distrubing, August 7, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Keepsake (Hardcover)

I don't know that I would call my reaction to this book "enjoyment" but it continues to haunt me. I was impressed with Ms. Gunn's writing style. She shows a remarkable ability to give a scene an intense emotional color. The circumstances under which the keepsake is acquired should evoke horror. But the events recounted by the narrator are recalled at what seems to be an immense remove. Whether this is the result of the passage of time or deep-seated trauma is impossible to tell. I think Ms. Gunn has a lot of potential and I look forward to reading her next book