The Room of Lost Things

Synopsis: Under his railway arch in Loughborough Junction, South London, Robert Sutton is taking leave of a lifetime of hard work. His dry-cleaning shop lies at the heart of a lively community, a fixed point in a changing world. And, as he explains to his successor, young East Londoner Akeel, it is also the resting place for the contents of his customers' pockets - and for their secrets and lies. As he helps Akeel to make a new life out of his old one, Robert also hands on all he knows of his world: the dirty dip of the Thames; the parks, rare green oases in a desert of high-rises and decaying mansion blocks; and the varied lives that converge at the junction. Humming with life, packed tight with detail, The Room of Lost Things is a hymn of love to a great and overflowing city, and a profoundly human story that holds us in its grip from the first sentence until the last.

Review: A very readable warm story about Robert, who has owned a dry cleaning shop at Loughborough Junction, South London for years, and whose mother owned it before him. He has decided it's time to call it a day and sell the shop. He finally settles on selling to Akeel Khan, a young British Muslim from east London, but it's going to be a wrench. The place is full of memories and full of lost things, things that careless customers have left behind. Robert's mother Alice started a filing system for all these things years ago, a box full of keys, one full of shopping lists and one with best man speeches in etc etc, she never threw anything away .. bus tickets, lottery tickets, hankies, earrings, receipts, letters and so on (are people really that careless?, I'm sure I'll check my pockets from now on). But Alice is long dead and Robert has been steadily adding to this collection for years. Akeel will come and work with Robert for a while, so that Robert can show him the ropes and fill him in on all the secrets and tricks of the trade.

Robert's customers are a mish mash of people, he knows them all well, likes some and disapproves of others. There is Australian au pair Helen, her employers Claire and Andrew, Stefan a gay fitness instructor, social worker Marylin, poor confused Mrs Ryan .. one of Marylin's clients and Dean a family man with a shady past (and present). They pop into the shop with their various items of clothing, or walk past the shop and give a cheery wave to Robert, but then we stay with them and follow them home. Most of them have secrets or problems they are struggling with. These are quite Lilac Busish in feel ... little vignettes within the main story whereby we get to see behind the polite conversations in the dry cleaners.

There are sundry other characters too, Charlie and Dan are encamped on a sofa placed at right angles to the road (exactly 3.15 miles from the statue of Eros as the crow flies) drinking body warmed beer, the new owner of the halal meat and veg shop owner just across the street and a Rastafarian man named The Poet who journeys all day long on the 345 bus talking and singing his own compositions, sometimes singing a little Bob Marley, Sir Bob ... messenger of Jah. Some people smile at him, some move away. I'd like to think I'd be a smiler but I know I'd be one of the one's that would be uncomfortable with it. We learn a lot too about Alice, Robert's mother and Jean and Katie, Robert's ex wife and daughter.

I loved the relationship betwen Akeel and Robert, polite and formal to begin - Akeel a bit in awe of Robert and Robert not quite sure about how to behave around a Muslim - softening with familiarity into a quiet confidence, both men revealing their anxieties and fears for the future and Robert especially revealing secrets from his past. It was very touching in places, I loved how Robert gave Mrs Ryan an old uncollected overcoat, when she had come in to pick up her husband's coat, not remembering that he had died years ago. Everything about Mrs Ryan was affecting, the way she had to have her key and address tied into her handbag, the way she knew the cold wet white stuff that was falling outside her window but couldn't remember the name of it, the way that she got anxious and lost her way when out shopping and couldn't remember where she lived only remembering when she eventually saw her address label, the way she only remembered what she had gone out shopping for when she made herself a calming cup of tea and found there was no milk.

Enjoyable story but sad in places. It has an unusual ending in that one minute you have your heart in your mouth, the next she's given you a different, more happy version.