Judith Kinghorn's writing is magical, enchanting. Her second novel is just as good as her first. The storytelling here is exquisite- slowly over the course of the novel she peels back the veil drawn over Cora's life, revealing a new fact here a new fact there. The subtle and shifting nature of memories is dealt with ingeniously, and at the end, one is still not entirely sure one has a firm grasp on how the events of Cora's life happened, just as none of the characters are entirely sure. ( )

So, I got about half-way through this novel and realized there was no point in continuing. Perhaps this is my own fault (I'm so crazy-busy that it takes a lot to penetrate my overwhelmed brain), but I came to the conclusion that I didn't really care about the characters in this novel and in fact, I only had the barest understanding of who they were and the motivations driving their actions. I know this is a terrible review, and perhaps this novel just wasn't for me, but this one definitely seems to lack the submersion-in-another world feature that I so appreciate in fiction. ( )

I absolutely loved The Last Summer, the first book by this author, and so I expected to really love this one too. It seemed to have so many things that I love in a book, but I'm afraid I was left very disappointed by it.

A mysterious countess comes back to live in England after many years away. She only comes back for her grandson, Jack, who is now an orphan, albeit an adult one. A local girl, Cecily, becomes interested in the countess and her companion, a writer who is penning the countess's memoirs.

This book spent so long beating about the bush that the bush withered and died. It's all very well building up the reader's interest in whatever the mystery is, but not if you go round and round in circles, confusing the reader. I didn't care about any of the characters and found them to be two-dimensional. By the time the mystery was revealed at the end it was a bit of a let-down.

The Memory of Lost Senses has a similar feel in style to The Last Summer, but the former just didn't gel with me the way the latter did. Hopefully this author's third book will be a return to the form of the Last Summer. ( )