Edith has always been a little neglected by her family. Her
older sister, Vivienne, and their mother fight like crazy,
and their father spends most of his time working to afford
his wife's expensive spending. As the years pass, tensions
between Edith and Viv grow as Viv rebels. When Edith takes a
job at the National Gallery of Canada, she finds it
difficult to stop worrying about her sister, wanting Liam to
love her, and finds friendship in an unexpected place.
While Nina Berkhout's THE GALLERY OF LOST SPECIES has very
poetic writing and is rich in metaphor, I had a difficult
time connecting to the story. Though several years pass in
the book, the time seems to drag, and I found it easy to get
distracted while reading. Edith is easily relatable, wanting
her family to be happy but knowing that such a cause is
likely out of reach for them, she is often passive and
rarely fights for her own happiness. However, as she
befriends Theo, this does change a bit, and her character
starts to come to life more, but unfortunately, over half
the story passes before that happens.
While I wasn't able to get engrossed in this book, I can
easily see readers who love a quiet plot and intimate
details falling hard for it. There is no over the top drama
or unbelievable adventure, but instead, a slow and in-depth
look at a family that has a strange, sort of ghostly love in
it. Anyone who has ever felt distanced from their parents or
their siblings will likely find Edith's story moving and
understandable.
While the writing is lovely, THE GALLERY OF LOST SPECIES
ultimately didn't work for me. However, readers who love a
slow, unfolding story line about families and other
mysterious entities will likely find Nina Berkhout's novel
an excellent pick.
Edith grows up in her big sister Vivienne's shadow. While the beautiful Viv is forced by the girls' overbearing mother to compete in child beauty pageants, plain-looking Edith follows in her father's footsteps: collecting oddities, studying coins, and reading from old books.
When Viv rebels against her mother's expectations, Edith finds herself torn between a desire to help her sister and pursuing her own love for a boy who might love her sister more than he loves her. When Edith accepts a job at the National Gallery of Canada, she meets an elderly cryptozoologist named Theo who is searching for a bird many believe to be extinct. Navigating her way through Vivienne's dark landscape while trying to win Liam's heart, Edith develops an unlikely friendship with Theo when she realizes they might have more in common than she imagined; they are both trying to retrieve something that may be impossible to bring back to life.
The Gallery of Lost Species is about finding solace in unexpected places - in works of art, in people, and in animals that the world has forgotten.
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