Family secrets are often the
hardest to understand or accept. Those hidden pieces of history can illuminate or distort
the lives of those who experience them, shining new understanding or destroying
one’s perspective, which is what Jeanne Stewart, protagonist of Hoarding Lies, Keeping Secrets, discovers.
More to the point, sometimes even steeling oneself for what is discovered isn’t
enough.
As
the novel opens, Jeanne, a retired surgeon, has returned to her family’s
ancestral home in San Antonio, the decaying Morton Mansion. Her eldest sister,
Deanna, died intestate, meaning the state of Texas claims the estate, and
Jeanne is there to help the state-certified appraiser, an elegant woman named
Elizabeth, to identify various pieces and fill in some of the gaps in the
family narrative for auctioning and historical purposes. The Morton family
history is an ugly one, and Jeanne – long estranged from Deanna, who emerges in
flashback as a hateful, vindictive woman, almost certainly mentally ill –
thinks she is prepared to revisit painful memories in an attempt to exorcise
them forever. However, as Jeanne and Elizabeth excavate through decades of
history – while professional crews excavate the detritus of Deanna’s decades of
hoarding – Jeanne finds levels of horror she couldn’t predict, and revelations
that shake even her jaded worldview.
From
a writing perspective, there’s much to recommend here; Lockhart’s main
characters are both older educated, professional women, and she captures their
individual strengths and voices with precision and flair. Lockhart’s grasp of
language is sure, and she easily brings Jeanne to life – and to a lesser
extent, Elizabeth – through dialogue and interior reflection. At times,
however, the tone and diction tip over into excess formalism, which isn’t
helped by the decision to place the vast majority of the narrative in the past
perfect tense; this places unneeded distance between the reader and Lockhart’s
characters. In addition, Lockhart presents most of the novel’s “action” as a
series of conversations in which Jeanne alternates between relating historical
information to Elizabeth and using interior monologue to provide emotional
commentary. Only toward the end of the novel, when Jeanne and Elizabeth are
trapped in the mansion during a storm and make an unfortunate trip into the
cellar, does the action move focus to exterior movement, and the momentum
suffers for it.
However,
the chief flaw of the novel is simply one of focus. From the informative if dry
author’s notes included at the end of this short novel, it’s clear the issue of
hoarding – its symptoms, causes and potential treatments – was a central one
for Lockhart, and the novel makes a serious effort to discuss hoarding for a
general audience in a non-exploitive fashion. However, the character of Deanna
is so monstrous in her behavior and outlook that the hoarding takes a backseat
to her other flaws. It seems clear Deanna is very probably suffering from
severe mental illness – something that’s likely endemic to the Morton line –
but the hoarding becomes almost benign in comparison to her other symptoms and
tics. As a result, the notes at the end seem almost superfluous, and inflate
one character trait to an importance that isn’t supported by the story. Still,
there’s an intriguing story interwoven with the troubles here, and Lockhart
shows enough skill and potential to make future works worth checking out.
