Keep

Trade Paperback – New

A timely tale of ownership and loss, loneliness and connection, and a meditation on all the stuff in our lives.

Home staging is an art of erasure. But in some casesno matter how much clutter you remove, or how many coats of white paint you applystains bleed through, and memories rise from the walls like ghosts. Harriet, an elderly poet whose eccentricities have been compounded by years of livingalone, must sell her beloved house. Having been recently diagnosed with dementia, she is being moved into a care facility against her wishes. When stagers Eleanor and Jacob are hired for the job, they quickly find themselves immersed in Harriets brimming and mysterious world, but as they struggle to help her, their own lives are unravelling.

Keepis a meditation on all the stuff in our livesfrom the singular, handcraftedartifact to indelible, mass-produced plastics. As Jenny Haysom excavates the material of our domestic spaces, she centres the people within them and celebrates the power of memory, even when it falters.