A Thief in the House of Memory

Darleen R. Golke is a high-school teacher-librarian in Abbotsford, B.C.

Memories of 16-year-old Declan Steeple’s mother, who walked out on her
family six years ago, “come back to haunt him willy-nilly,” but he
has yet to come to terms with his unresolved sense of abandonment. Dec
lives with Sunny, his five-year-old sister; his independently wealthy
father, a “man of leisure, a putterer and handyman, and an amateur
historian”; and Birdie, his unofficial stepmother, in a modern house
down the hill from Steeple Hall, the ancestral family mansion where the
family lived during his mother’s tenure. His father meticulously
maintains Steeple Hall, and Sunny and Dec regularly spend time there.

From the afternoon Dec and Sunny discover a body at Steeple Hall,
apparently the result of a break and enter gone awry, Dec’s
imagination shifts into overdrive, precipitating a series of random,
vivid images involving his mother that provide glimpses into his
childhood past as Dec struggles to understand her desertion. A portrait
emerges of a willful, self-centred woman, who married for money, yet
craved excitement and felt trapped with a “kind and gentle” husband
and two children, entombed in a big old house.

While Dec’s stereotypical family appears to nurture secrets, his
eccentric and highly intelligent friends openly provide unconditional
and practical support. To his best friend, Ezra, Dec confides his
suspicion that his father is somehow involved with the dead man and
possibly with his mother’s disappearance. Gradually memories surface
that reveal relationships from the past that clarify the present, but
because Dec and his father have never discussed the circumstances of his
mother’s mysterious departure, confusion persists. Only when Dec
confronts his father with his suspicions does a form of the truth
emerge, including an addendum delivered by Birdie.

Multiple thieves inhabit Dec’s literal and imaginative “house of
memories.” In this complex and multi-layered coming-of-age novel,
award-winning author Tim Wynne-Jones, with his usual adept brush
strokes, paints another portrait of an appealing teenager’s internal
journey as he struggles to understand his loss, to accept change, and to
create meaning within his world. Highly recommended.