The Book of Lost Things (original 2006; edition 2007)

I noticed something odd about this story about halfway through, when every single true villain (except for the crooked man) turns out to be female. Then I realized that this was yet another coming of age tale in which the male protagonist must fight and kill every representation of a (pregnant, strong, opinionated) woman until he works out his rage and hatred of the real woman in his life. Terrific! How necessary!

Reading Rainbow Readers, if you love fairy tales, and want to see them re-formed into interesting, original pieces of work, my advice to you is to put down this book as soon as you pick it up, and then go out and find "The Bloody Chamber" by Angela Carter.

Props for the disgusting description, though. One star for good use of teeth and gore.


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I noticed something odd about this story about halfway through, when every single true villain (except for the crooked man) turns out to be female. Then I realized that this was yet another coming of age tale in which the male protagonist must fight and kill every representation of a (pregnant, strong, opinionated) woman until he works out his rage and hatred of the real woman in his life. Terrific! How necessary!

Reading Rainbow Readers, if you love fairy tales, and want to see them re-formed into interesting, original pieces of work, my advice to you is to put down this book as soon as you pick it up, and then go out and find "The Bloody Chamber" by Angela Carter.

Props for the disgusting description, though. One star for good use of teeth and gore.


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I really enjoyed The Book of Lost Things. I was worried I wouldn't, as I'd heard opinions both ways, but I did like it. I thought that some of the descriptions were just spot on, from the very start --

He had, in truth, been losing [his mother] for a very long time. The disease that was killing her was a creeping, cowardly thing, a sickness that ate away at her from the inside, slowly consuming the light within so that her eyes grew a little less bright with each passing day, and her skin a little more pale.

After all, I just watched someone die like that. And that is how it is: something is lost every day. The first day I visited my grandfather in hospital, he smiled at me and tried to reassure me that he would be alright soon. The next time I visited him, I was the only person he recognised -- or at least, the only one he responded to (he still tried to smile at me, especially when I told him I was making Grandma a cup of tea). Then the next day, he couldn't see us at all, and all he could say was "I don't understand". And then the next day he took one long last breath and died. So yes, that's the way it goes: illness eats a person up from the inside, stealing them piece by piece, day by day.

Maybe it was that first bit and how it struck me as just right, and the fact that I'm grieving now, that got me so invested in the story. In a way, I expected all of it: it's basically the same story as the first Malory Towers book, or even Edmund and Lucy from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Sibling jealousies and conflicts. The rewritings of fairytales weren't all that surprising to me, immersed as I am in fairytale retellings. But something about the turn of phrase was just right, and I fell in love with the quiet love story of Roland and Raphael, as well.

There's a lot of violence and ugliness in this book, and sometimes that doesn't read very well. I read reviews of this that felt the retellings were quite female-positive, but it didn't feel that way to me. There're powerful women in the story, but their sexuality is almost part of the horror. It's the homosexual relationship between Raphael and Roland, with one of them safely off-screen, which is idealised, and the homosocial relationships between Roland and David, or David and his father, or David and the Woodsman. The more I think about that the more uncomfortable I feel -- though Anna is free of that disturbing power (but then, she's a perpetual child), and so is David's mother (although the bit with kissing her corpse could ring a little oddly, and her coaxing voice leading him astray, and the whole dead Madonna thing she has going on). David's step-mother is maybe the most positive: he sees her negatively, but comes to understand her better and try harder to get along with her.

Anyway, those points didn't stop me enjoying the story quite a lot, but it's worth thinking about.

Oh, and after reading other reviews and so on, I decided to skip the 150 pages of analysis that Connolly includes. I'm aware of pretty much all the fairytales mentioned, so I don't need the background, and I preferred on reflection to let the story stand alone. I'm a postgrad lit student, I don't need Connolly to do the work for me... ( )

A coming-of-age tale centered upon young David, who has lost his mother and resents his new stepmother and baby brother. Trying to escape his circumstances, David stumbles into an eerie fairy tale world of knights and beasts much like those in the stories his mother used to recount. David sets out on a quest to find the king, whose Book of Lost Things holds the secret to his return home and, David hopes, perhaps even to his mother’s return to life. Reminiscent at times of Lewis’s Narnia, at others of the Brothers Grimm, The Book of Lost Things will resonate with those who still believe in the magic of childhood. ( )

This is a fantastic adult fairy tale. It reads sort of like Neil Gaiman's Stardust in style. Fantastic, creepy and well written.