Catherine Raynes: The Keeper and The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances

The Keeper by Tana French  

On a cold night in the remote Irish village of Ardnakelty, a girl goes missing. Sweet, loving Rachel Holohan was about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot. Instead, she’s dead in the river. 
 
In a close-knit small town, a death like this isn’t simple. It comes wrapped in generations-old grudges and power struggles, and it splits the townland in two. Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here now, and he owes them loyalty, but his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Ardnakelty’s tangles. As the feud becomes more vicious, their settled peace starts to crack apart. And when they uncover a scheme that casts a new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line. 

  

The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon  

In a self-running, smart house, a young and sentient Roomba listens as her owner, Harold, reads aloud to his dying wife, Edie. Mesmerized by To Kill a Mockingbird and craving the human connection she witnesses in Harold’s stories, the little vacuum renames herself Scout and embarks on a journey of self-discovery. 
 
But when Edie passes away, Scout and her fellow sentient appliances discover that there are sinister forces in their midst. The omnipresent Grid, which monitors every household in the City, seeks to remove Harold from his home, a place he’s lived in for fifty years. 
 
With the help of Adrian, a neighborhood boy who grows close to Scout and Harold, as well as Kate, Harold and Edie’s formerly estranged daughter, the humans and the appliances must come together to outwit the all-controlling Grid lest they risk losing everything they hold dear. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from newstalks'b.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Just come up to twenty to twelve one news Storks,
they'd be Katherine Rains book reviewer has her picks for
this weekend. Get a Catherine, Hello, Jack. Could be a
very good weekend. I reckon for just parking up on
the couch with a couple of good reads. And so
our first for this weekend is The Keeper by Tana French.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
So this is part of a trilogy, and it's actually
the third part and it follows the trilogy has followed
this guy, Carl Hooper, who was a retired cargo cop
and he moved to this very small town at an
Arkley in Ireland. And you know, he's there because it's
simple and beautiful and he just wants some peace. And
of course he's not found a lot of that, apart
from how beautiful the place is. Instead, he's found himself

(00:51):
involved in you know the webs of how people work
in you know, centuries of people thinking and what other
people think and binding them together in their past. And
so after the sort of four years he's been there,
he's built this place for him amongst the townspeople there,
and he's fixed up his cottage and he's got a dog,

(01:12):
and he makes craft furniture, and he's engaged to this
woman called Lena, and he's been mentoring this team called Trey,
and he's quite well liked in the town. And then
this young woman, Rachel Hulahan goes missing and she's found
dead at the river, and the whole town is entangled
in this, and of course there's more to her death
than meets the eye. Was it suicide, was it murder?

(01:34):
Was it an accident? And she herself was about to
become engaged to this guy, Eugene, who's the son of
the wealthiest and most influential man in the town, Tommy Mornihan.
And people in the town are split over their opinions
and theories and rumors and gossip fly around the town,
and characters change and opinions change, and there's questionable motives,

(01:54):
and you get this very authentic environment of the small
town and you feel the humidity of the fog, and
you feel like you're in the local pub chatting with
the locals around the issues. They're never saying exactly what
they mean, directly saying what's on their mind, and you
get immersed in this story and wonderful characters, and the
rumors and the gossip and the friction and the suspicion
of the locals just adds to this intense part of

(02:17):
the mystery of what's going on.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Oh superb Okay, that's The Keeper by Tana French. I've
got to say I am delighted by the sound of
your next book for us this morning. The Infinite Sadness
of Small Appliance is by Glenn Dixon.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
So this is quite a dystopian story, a little bit
on the cozy side actually, and it's about a bunch
of household appliances, in particular this very naive and curious
romba called Scout, and she lives in this comfortable home
with Harold and Edie, and it's been perfect for raising
their family, which they've now done and Kate's an adult.

(02:53):
They're both retired and they're really enjoying their years together.
But then Edie becomes ill and the small appliances around
the house start to notice, and they start to try
and help out more. And despite the circumstance of her
declining house sort of the first half of the book
has a very relaxed feel and you kind of the
appliances are engaging, but you know, apart from Harold struggling

(03:15):
to come to terms with what's happening with his wife.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
And then the.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Story progresses a little more and Kate returns home to
help her dad and through what's going on with Edie,
and this story actually becomes far more dystopian. And you
get this into this character, this overseeing entity called the Grid,
and it's monitoring the home and the inhabitants and these
human feelings, and the appliances quickly figure out that the

(03:40):
overage and Grid won't let Harol and his appliance has
stayed together in this house, and they're trying to keep
their humans happy and cared for. And you get multiple
points of view that include lots of humans and a
very spark vacuum cleaner of course, which is Scout, And
there's quirky and it's a very touching read and it
makes you think about things, particularly things like II And

(04:00):
then every time you call for Alexa or Google to
do something that's very personalized for you, it certainly make
you think about it. After you've read this book.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Oh very good. Okay, this sounds fun The Infinite Sadness
of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon. Catherine's first book is
The Keeper by Tana French. All the deats are, of course,
at newstorksb dot co dot nz.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to Newstalks EDB from nine am Saturday, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio