Need a charming book to read?
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper is Phaedra Patrick’s first novel. Patrick trained as a stained-glass artist, but her interest in writing grew after she entered several short story competitions. With the publication of The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper, Patrick has become a full-time writer.
Arthur and Miriam have been married for forty years when Miriam becomes ill suddenly and dies. For the past year, following Miriam’s death, Arthur has gone about his daily routine without much feeling or interest in anything. Dan, Arthur’s son, lives in Australia with his wife and two children; Dan runs three successful auto body shops in Sydney. He rarely contacts his father. Lucy, Arthur’s daughter, is dealing with her own grief and loss, not only her mother’s death, but a miscarriage and subsequent divorce.
On the anniversary of Miriam’s death, Arthur decides to go through Miriam’s clothes and donate them to a charity that rescues cats. Arthur chooses that charity because he has found a pamphlet about it Miriam stashed under the telephone. His own feelings about cats are mixed since he frequently has to shoo neighborhood cats out of his garden to keep them from using it as their personal bathroom.
Tucked in the toe of a pair of Miriam’s boots, Arthur discovers a pretty red box with a lock on it. Being a retired locksmith, he quickly opens the lock and peers into the box. He finds a charm bracelet decorated with eight distinctive charms: an elephant, a tiger, a heart, a painter’s palette, a book, a locket, and a thimble. Arthur has no memory of this bracelet and thinks that it looks like nothing Miriam would have every chosen or worn. He is certainly intrigued by the bracelet and the fact that Miriam has hidden it away in the boot inside the boot box. Generally, charm bracelets have meaning behind each charm, so Arthur begins to wonder what the charms mean, why Miriam has hidden the bracelet, and what else does he not know about his wife of forty years.
Upon close examination, Arthur finds a phone number engraved on the elephant. Quite impulsively, he calls the number which turns out to be an international number to India. Arthur’s odyssey begins from that phone call.
One can draw obvious parallels to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce in that Arthur, like Harold, begins a journey without much forethought or preparation. Arthur meets a variety of characters along the way as he unfolds the mystery of Miriam’s life before their marriage. Not all that he finds suits him; some of it disturbs him. However, he meets people on his journey who jolt him out of his doldrums. The charm bracelet takes Arthur into a new world where he finds unlikely friendships and also finds renewed relationships with Dan and Lucy, his children.
During Arthur’s journey, he meets people who ask him for advice, a new experience for him. In that regard, the story reminded me of Tepper Isn’t Going Out by Calvin Trillin. Trillin tells the story of Tepper who lives in NYC where he chooses to read his newspaper in his car, parked in a particularly good parking spot. As we know, parking spots are at a premium in NYC. People continually ask Tepper if he is going out in hopes they can have his parking spot. Soon, however, people get into the car with Tepper and tell him about their problems, so he becomes a de facto therapist.
Phaedra Patrick was showing her son her own charm bracelet when she thought of creating Miriam’s story for Arthur to discover.
BookPage describes The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper as a book that “pierces the heart. You root for [Arthur] every step of the way.” Perhaps Kirkus Reviews sums up the story most effectively: “As cozy and fortifying as a hot cup of tea on a cold afternoon.”
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