How well can you know a person, even a person you've loved and lived with for decades? This is the question posed by Phaedra Patrick's gentle, funny and wistful first novel, The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper.

The curious charms mentioned in the title are not attributes of Arthur Pepper, a rather ordinary pensioner from Yorkshire. They are actual charms found on a bracelet that belonged to his late wife, Miriam. Arthur's investigations show them to be mementos of specific times, people and places in her life. It seems that the outwardly contented wife and mother that Arthur knew was a very different person before they met and married.

As Arthur uncovers Miriam's past, the charms of Arthur himself become more evident. Amazingly old-fashioned, he seems not to have come of age in the 1960s but the 1950s or earlier; this made the reviewer think, ‘Come on, this chap is younger than Mick Jagger.' But this is part of the book's sweetness. 

A virgin when he married, Arthur has never been with another woman; even chastely kissing an old friend of Miriam's makes him feel vaguely adulterous. He dutifully waters his fern, whom he has named Frederica. He treats even the weirdest people he meets on his quest with kindness and frets that his stodginess squashed something adventurous in his wife. Arthur's charms, in this charmless age, are curious indeed.

Charming, too, is Patrick's straightforward and unadorned style. Because of this, when Arthur's grief overwhelms him like the tiger who almost eats him at one point—you have to read the book—it pierces the heart. You root for him every step of the way.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Arthur Pepper lives a simple life, eventless since his beloved wife, Miriam, died: same food, same clothes, same daily routine. On the one-year anniversary of her death, something changes. While painfully sorting through her possessions, Arthur finds an exquisite gold charm bracelet he never saw her wear. On the chain are an elephant, a tiger, a book, a heart, a palette, and other charms. Curious, Arthur begins a search for the origin of these trinkets that takes him from New York to London, Paris, and India. Not only is Arthur's life amazingly altered, but he learns much more about Miriam and the choice she made when she married him. VERDICT Tender, insightful, and surprising, this wonderful debut novel is a stunning addition to the popular genre of transformative stories of otherwise uneventful lives. It will instantly capture the hearts of readers who loved Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Nina George's The Little Paris Bookshop, and Antoine Laurain's The Red Notebook.—Susan Clifford Braun, Bainbridge Island, WA

Patrick's debut novel evokes whimsy and poignancy. Since Miriam, his wife of 40 years, died a year ago, 69-year-old Arthur Pepper stopped living; he merely exists, until he finds a gold charm bracelet he'd never seen before tucked inside one of her shoes. The first of the bracelet's eight charms is a bejeweled elephant inscribed with a phone number. He calls it and is shocked to learn that Miriam once lived in India. He sets about exploring the other charms—including a tiger, a locket, and a thimble—which take him from Yorkshire to a manor house in Bath long past its glory days, and further afield, to London and Paris. While unraveling Miriam's past, Arthur realizes that his outward journey is also a journey within, and in a comically heartwarming fashion he attempts to embrace the unknown while slowly discovering his positive impact on others. This is a sweet story with an almost magical, but never saccharine denouement, as a newly whole Arthur Pepper emerges. Agent: Clare Wallace, Darley Anderson Agency. (May)