Review: You Must Remember This Grapples With the Dangers of Nostalgia

A Maine family fortune founded on rum running. Star-crossed lovers. Dementia. Fire. Ice. You Must Remember This, the latest novel from Reason contributor Kat Rosenfield (author of No One Will Miss Her), grapples with the temptation to imagine a simpler, happier past when the present is tough.

At the center of the whodunit is Delphine, a 26-year-old woman who combines the sincere burnt-out weariness of a New York City refugee with profound naivete about the complications of adult love and family life. Her obsession with her fading grandmother's love story upends nearly a dozen lives by the end of the tale—and leaves the reader cautious about rose-tinted nostalgia in all its forms.