The Caretaker struck me as one of those books that's built around a concept and style—an authorial version of jumping up and down crying "Look at me! Look at me." However the characters were so two-dimensional that I never really engaged with any of them. Yes, the conspt at the heart of this book is interesting, but it's not enough to carry the weight of the full novel.

This novel works through an accumulation of one exquisite detail after another, rather than through action. For this reason it takes more commitment and concentration than a conventionally plot-driven novel, and its rewards are different, and deep. I don't think there is a better way to have told this story about the new caretaker for a strange collection of stuff, a museum where "peerless antiquities commune happily with the ignored, the discarded, the undervalued and the valueless." Doon Arbus feels in complete control of her unusual story here--her storytelling left me feeling like I was in assured hands. The narrative voice is so matter-of-fact as to be disorienting; as the story progresses this voice begins to gather echoes of dusty dread. The publisher's comparison with Shirley Jackson is apt--this novel feels like an everyday encounter with madness, told so dryly that it all seems completely normal until it's too late.