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The Memory Trap

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Winner of the 2015 Melbourne Prize Best Writing Award.


A novel about memory, music, friendship, family rifts and reconciliation, this is a beautiful, intelligent read.

Nina Jameson, an international consultant on memorial projects based in London, has been happily married to Daniel for twelve years. When her life falls apart she accepts a job in her hometown of Melbourne. There she joins her sister, Zoe, embroiled in her own problems with Elliot, an American biographer of literary women. And she finds herself caught up in age-old conflicts of two friends from her past: the celebrated pianist Ramsay Blake and his younger brother, Sean. All these people have been treading thin ice for far too long. Nina arrives home to find work, loves and entrenched obsessions under threat.

A rich and compelling story of marriage, music, the illusions of love and the deceits of memory, THE MEMORY TRAP's characters are real, flawed and touchingly human.

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    • Books+Publishing

      February 5, 2013

      What a mess people can make of their lives. In this remarkable novel we meet Nina, a consultant on memorial projects, and her apparently perfect husband Daniel, who suddenly dumps her; Ramsay, a self-focussed piano virtuoso, his doting step-father George, besotted friend Zoe and her bitter husband Elliot; Daniel’s slighted brother Sean and his (mercifully) supportive partner Tom, to mention only some of the characters. The story spans a number of years and several continents as Nina carries out her international commissions, Zoe follows Ramsay to New York, Sean travels from place to place, starting but never finishing his books, and the estranged Daniel dashes to Melbourne to try to re-connect with his wife. Andrea Goldsmith’s characters are complex, infuriating but believable people, their behaviours often rooted in past memories but their slow progress towards self-realisation always plausible and sometimes very moving. I occasionally wearied of Nina’s descriptions of memorials around the world, evocative though they are, yet other readers may well be stimulated to seek them out. ‘It’s easier to cling to a lost past than throw yourself on the uncertain winds of the future.’ For me, this is the essence of The Memory Trap. If you have ever loved, and lost—read it.

      Max Oliver is a veteran Australian bookseller

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  • English

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