I bought this when it was initially marketed - a total impulse buy based on picking the book up in the shop. I only mention it because I have forgotten what that impulse was. However, I do remember I bought it in The Trafford Centre, which makes for a good mental picture for the soulless Green Oaks Centre which features in this book.
The story is good - initially about a child playing detective, then cutting to 20 or so years later to the lives of two workers at Green Oaks who have been affected in different ways by the disappearance of the girl back then. Eventually this central mystery is solved, but our journey up to that point is what makes the book worth while.
Young Kate's story has the right weight for a child's story, you're interested in her thoughts and where her life is going. Lisa and Kurt are the main protagonists in the present, and we see their soul destroying lives working at Green Oaks - the latter are drawn especially well - the right mix of funny, bitter and sad. As a music fan, a key moment for me is the writing around a failed trip to see Kraftwerk - perfect.
It's a shame that the ending seems a bit rushed. Good writing is hard to pull off, so I feel mean criticising, but it did feel like we got so far into the story and O'Flynn knocked over a domino, which set the rest falling and all too quickly it was all over - and everything in its place at the end. Anyway, I would recommend this and look forward to reading more. ( )

In What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn, characters experienced many versions of loss – from deaths to missing friends to lost ambitions and broken hearts. Central to this story is Kate Meaney – a precocious girl who fancied herself a junior detective. One day, she turned up missing. Neighbors and the press blamed Adrian, Kate’s friend, for her disappearance, and he could never shake the community’s suspicions. He ran away, leaving behind his parents and younger sister.

Fast forward 20 years to Kurt and Lisa. Lisa, Adrian’s sister, was the assistant manager of a local music store, and Kurt was a mall security guard who was haunted by the memory of Kate and his deceased wife, Nancy. Lisa and Kurt became friends and then romantically involved, not knowing that Kate’s disappearance would connect them in many ways.

The story of a missing child is never easy to read, and after O’Flynn masterfully showed Kate to her readers, her disappearance made it even harder. Kate was smart, likeable and unforgettable – the kind of girl you root for in a book. You wanted her disappearance to have some closure, despite the sadness.

I can’t say the same for the other characters in this book. O’Flynn was at her best creating Kate – I wished the whole book was Kate’s narrative. The other characters were regular, and their voyage of self-discovery was predictable. Inexplicably, O’Flynn included narratives from anonymous mall shoppers at the end of some chapters, which added nothing to the story.

What Was Lost was the first book by Catherine O’Flynn, and her writing holds a lot of promise. I was not as mesmerized by this novel as other readers, but there were parts of this book that were outstanding. I will definitely read another book by O’Flynn, hoping her future characters spring from that same creative place where she created Kate. It’s there where O’Flynn shines. ( )

‘What Was Lost’ is a great story about a lost little girl, and about people who are connected in a way or another with the Green Oaks shopping centre. I found the book very interesting and unique in many ways.

The inner lives and sensations, the social interactions and patterns, and the ordinary humdrum life mix and split in the book in original ways. The characters are well crafted: they're ordinary people, but the representation of their lives, decisions and thoughts is not dull, but insightful.

The multifaceted title of the book encourage the reader to complement the thematical spheres. Also the letters of anonymous members of the community emphasize the human and social agenda, so that we’re not dealing with a mere superficial crime novel.

I liked the themes that I found on my reading in the book: one's loyalty to one's self vs. habitual conformity, superficial level of acts vs. mental structures we share, how we face changes this consumer society is leading us into.

The way the story closes makes it a credible and fully developed plot - and guarantees it a place among the crime fiction. I would've liked to see it left open, to leave the reader with various choices - as if to leave it open whether Kate was a girl of blood and flesh or if she was an angel or a conceptual primus motor behind the lives of the characters of the events, or even behind the converging epicentre the Green Oaks shopping centre was.

The discourse is both fluent and natural, and yet has some faltering in it. The style and structure that the author has decided to write is fluent and natural for most of the book. Still, the ways the character’s personalities are present or hidden in the narrator’s discourse do falter a bit. The decision to put in the anonymous letters (in italics), and still mix character’s personal style into the narrator’s part (like Kate’s in the beginning) would have needed some further revision.

Tthis is a great little story. It makes me await for more from Katherine O’Flynn.

This is a very sweet story and at the same time a bit heartbreaking. I really enjoyed this one and think it would make a great bookgroup read. The writing is very good and the story wonderful.

Kate Meaney, a little 10 year old girl, only wants to be a detective. She and her little stuffed monkey in spats go on "surveillance" missions, practicing the art of detection. She takes notes and has no problem staying in one spot watching someone for hours. Then one day, she disappears literally into thin air. That was in 1984. This story is the backdrop for the rest of the book, which takes place in modern times. As a disaffected security guard watches the monitor screen in a mall where he works, he sees a little girl sitting all alone, holding a stuffed monkey. When he looks up again, she is gone.

There is also a great characterization of modern consumer society woven throughout the story that you can't fail to notice. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys something refreshingly different and wants to read some very good writing. ( )

The story that involves a murder, a suicide and abuse and it tells of the lives of individuals involved or affected but the incidents, which all sounds a bit serious. But it's not, there's a great lightness and humour that runs through the book. A good read. ( )