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. ( )

Truly excellent so far. Compulsively readable, kinda rare in a novel of this caliber. Easy to identify with first Kate then Lisa. I had to go to the internet to find pictures of shopping centers in Birmingham, England. Even fiction needs pictures sometimes. ( )

There was a sadness and a sense of loss that permeated this story.

Even when her father was alive, Kate was such a lonely child, absorbed in a fantasy life that was encouraged by her father. I so felt the loss of a mother and a childhood playing with friends. Kate took her How to be a Detective book so literally and made leaps in her mind as to the explanations for ordinary situations during her surveillance of them in her local shopping centre.

The shopping Centre was central to the whole book. They are surreal places and its portrayal seemed disturbingly accurate. It was made even more so by glimpses into what goes on behind the consumer facade with the staff corridors and service areas etc and the loss of community that came about through it's development.

I thought that the characters working in the shopping centre with their own losses and secrets gave an even greater poignancy to the story..

There was more than a nod to it being an social observation and sometimes sharp humour sneaked in. ( )

The best part of this book is the subtle criticism of consumer culture, and O`Flynn`s great writing. The ending was a little disturbing, but satisfying. Overall, I definately recommend it! ( )

Liked the structure. Kept me guessing about what had happened. ( )

The first part of the book is seen through the eyes of Kate a rather lonely little girl who tries her hand at being a detective. The adult readers' knowledge of the world will make them very conscious of the dangers which the little girl cannot appreciate.
Her fate is the result of her innocence. However, it is many years later before we discover what has happened to her. The rather bleak setting of the service areas of a Birmingham shopping mall gives the story a sense of forboding. The style for the first half at least, has just a touch of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. ( )

What Was Lost - Catherine O'Flynn

( )

On the short list and the long list for many prestigious fiction awards, this 2007 Costa First Novel award-winner does not disappoint. This is the story of Kate Meaney, a 10-year-old girl living in Birmingham, England, who turns to her fledgling private investigation business (with partner Mickey the Monkey) to escape the loneliness she feels after her father dies and vanishes one spring day, never to be seen again.

This is also the story of the aftermath of Kate's disappearance and the impact it has on a number of people: Lisa, whose brother was a suspect in the girl's disappearance and who disappeared himself; Kurt, a security guard at the mall at the center of the action; and Gavin, another mall security guard with a questionable past and odd habits.

What Was Lost is in turn laugh-out-loud funny and deeply bleak. The description of consumer mall culture is spot on. The book is written from several different points of view which does take some time to get used to. ( )

I loved this book! There was a sinister feeling throughout the first quarter of the book because just from the back cover you know that this fascinating little girl Kate is going to disappear. The present day stories were more mundane but to me just as appealing as Kate's. As the mystery haunted all the characters, it also haunted me and days later I'm still thinking about it.

This is an unusual novel for mature readers. It's a mystery, but the plot is secondary to the characterization. Kate is an independent child who aspires to be a detective, and her uneventful stakeouts of suspects at the mall are a hoot. The record store employees and their customers are pretty entertaining too. Be warned that there are plenty of sad parts mixed in with the humor. ( )

slow, convoluted and i'm waiting for the last few chapters to tie it all together. ( )

I read this book for an on-line book group, although it's probably something I would have read in due course anyway.

The first part of the book was told from the perspective of a child, Kate Meaney, who saw herself as a detective and spent a lot of time at the local shopping mall. Her mother left shortly after giving birth, and her elderly father died of a stroke, and so her grandmother came to look after her. Before he died, her father gave her a book on how to be a detective. Kate came across as vulnerable, although she certainly would not have considered herself that. Her character was very sweet and innocent, and although you knew something bad happened to her, it was quite intriguing to find out what that was.

The second part of the book was about people who worked at the mall, some 20 years after Kate disappeared. One was a security guard, the other a duty manager at a record store. Both were disillusioned about life, and eventually are brought together by Kate.

The story was interesting, and for a debut novel was well written. ( )

An interesting book & a really fast read. I loved the character of Kate, with her 'Harriet the Spy'-esque hobby. The jump from Kate to Lisa & Kurt was disconcerting at first, but I liked their characters & the way the story progressed. I wasn't quite sure how it was going to end until it actually ended! I would read more of Catherine O'Flynn's books.

Katie is a 12 year old detective in the vein of Harriet the Spy. In 1984 Birmingham she hangs out at the newly open shopping center in town, spying on random individuals waiting for her big break. She disapears without a trace.
20 year later a shopping center security center staff sees Katie on the CCTV monitors.
Beautifully crafted fiction. Themes of damaged people, damaged lives, love and loss, famiies and finding oneself. The miasma of life in this gray, misty, depressed Birmingham. Life just carries on without purpose.
Amazing debut by O'flynn. ( )

Mired in lethagy, Lisa and Kurt are just going through the motions of living. Kate, a small girl, is the only person in town with purpose it seems. The shopping mall is a character, confusing yet predictable and not malevolent till near the end. How all are entertwined becomes apparent only gradually as we ever so gradually become aware of a mystery. ( )

Winner of the Costa (formerly Whitbread prize) 1st novel book award Catherine O'Flynn's novel 'What was lost' is very finely plotted--intricately weaving the past and present together around the disappearance in the mid 80's of an 11 year old girl. The book looks at a mid 80's declining manufacturing/industrial city Birmingham England at its beginning stages of recasting itself into a more modern city of shopping malls and outlets. Young Kate Meaney when she's not at school--is a lonely little girl being brought up by her aging father--her mother having deserted her. She dreams of becoming a young detective. With pen and notebook in hand she is on the prowl for wrongdoers--hanging out around banks and the Green Oak shopping mall on the lookout for suspicious characters. Then her father dies of a stroke and an even older aunt comes to take care of her. Life turns upside down for her but then one day she spots that suspicious character and begins to follow him.

That is the first of four parts. The second part moves us up almost 20 years--begins with a security guard at the mall spotting a young girl on the surveillance cameras. From there the mystery of Kate's disappearance unravels in parallel aong with numerous links between the new characters of Part 2--particularly Kurt the security guard and Lisa a manager of a music store--taking us back into their pasts.

As well this is not just a novel about the mysterious disappearance of a little girl. It is just as much a novel about ordinary lives and the things that people do (work) to survive. O'Flynn has a razor sharp eye for detail and an excellent ear for describing the frustrations of working people at a variety of levels in the working foodchain--and this contrasts quite well with the missing girl thread of her story--helping to give the novel more depth and humor. O'Flynn has no problem juggling larger or smaller themes and fitting them together. A very graceful, well plotted fluid bit of work here. Very enjoyable and I look forward to more from her in the future. Recommended. ( )

Ever stop in the middle of a shopping mall and wonder what ever came before? As in, what did people do before, on that land, in their spare time, and what else was coveted before easily found consumer goods? Set in suburban Britain, this is a fictional meditation on family, memory, consumerism in the format of a murder mystery and love story. All tied up with a bow. ( )

The story begins with the disappearance of the precocious child detective Kate Meaney, but soon settles on the routine lives of several young adults tied in one way or another to Kate. There is the socially-awkward security guard Kurt, the passive shopkeeper Adrian, and Adrian’s sister, Lisa, who, although seemingly intelligent, appears unable to walk away from either her indifferent boyfriend Ed or her lackluster job as assistant manager in a music store. Speaking of music, their situations call to mind the lyrics from an old Bob Dylan song (Chimes of Freedom):

“Tollin’ for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones and worse
And for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe …”

The sadness of their day-to-day lives is summarized by Lisa when she talks about the pandas: “they spend their lives looking for leaves and bamboo to eat, but eating the stuff does them no good, they can’t digest it, so they have no energy. They have to lie down and rest all the time. They spend their whole lives in this pointless pursuit that just saps them.” And then there’s Kurt who meets his future wife Nancy at a concert for two put on by a busker who plays at a plodding pace on the street but rips through Django Rhinehart solos in the club – what’s that all about? Nancy falls out of love with Kurt but they don’t talk about it. Before they can, Nancy is killed in an auto accident. Finally, there’s Ian the clerk in the music store who torments poor old Mr. Wake by promising that his order for Mozart’s Horn Concertos Nos. 1-4 on cassette tape will arrive any day now although he knows it’s been discontinued. Lisa finally transfers the CD to tape to put Mr. Wake out of his misery. You get the picture – this is pretty depressing stuff. Although Kate has been lost physically, she is beyond this daily grind. The rest of these people are walking zombies – lost emotionally. As author O’Flynn says, they are “stuck in dead end jobs or relationships wondering how they got there.”

It’s not all bad however. For one thing, the mystery of Kate’s disappearance is solved by the end of the book, and Kurt and Lisa manage to find each another. Not surprisingly, events of the past connect the characters in meaningful ways that become apparent as the story unfolds. Also, there’s the case of Teresa, a classmate of Kate’s from an abusive family, whom Kate manages to launch on a trajectory of success. So, O’Flynn can express hope and optimism: “What I most wanted to convey was the confidence and fidelity of friends. While the characters may have little or no belief in themselves, it is the faith of their friends that provides their salvation.”

All in all, a very well done and entertaining little book despite the depressing workaday lives of the characters. Definitely worth reading. ( )

Catherine O’Flynn’s Costa First Novel Award-winning story, What Was Lost, does an amazing job of giving voice to a wide range of characters struggling to wade through their routine and claustrophobic lives. First we meet ten year-old Kate Meany who, in 1984, is valiantly forging on after the death of her beloved father, adhering closely to the guidelines of the last book he purchased for her, How To Be a Detective. It is at once heartbreaking and admirable to see how lonely Kate clings to her surveillance routines, including daily excursions to the newly opened Green Oaks Mall. Her only friends are her twenty-two year-old neighbor Adrian, who fully supports Kate’s long-range business plan to open her own detective agency, and schoolmate Teresa, who hides her brilliance behind bored high jinks and classroom distractions. The story abruptly jumps to 2003 and turns both considerably darker and considerably funnier as we meet several characters who work at the mall. Kurt works as a security guard in the mall, a place that his working-class father forbade his family to step foot into. Kurt also lives with a secret about Kate’s disappearance, and the insomnia this causes seems well-suited to his endless nights viewing video monitors of the mall’s cold corridors. Lisa, Adrian’s younger sister, is overqualified in her position as duty manager at a mega music store in the mall. The segments that detail her staff and patron interactions would be depressing were they not so mordantly hysterical. Interspersed throughout this section are italicized snippets that expose us to the frequently bitter and hostile minds of those who work, shop and prowl through the mall. The heartbreaking ending brings together most of the lost and lonely souls whose lives O’Flynn has so artfully constructed with both pathos and biting humor and makes the reader think long afterward about the long-ranging consequences of both physical and emotional loss. ( )

O'Flynn's debut begins with self-made detective and ten-year-old orphan Kate Meaney as she buses her way to the Green Oaks Shopping Mall, where she'll surveil the various customers who may want to commit crimes: "Crime was out there. Undetected, unseen." With notebook and stuffed monkey in tow, Kate spends her days when not in school either outside the mall looking to catch a thief or at a neighborhood store sharing her observations with the shop owner's son, 22-year-old Adrian Palmer. When Kate disappears one day, never to be seen again, suspicion falls on Adrian, and the two-decade-spanning, unsolved case wreaks destruction on the lives of those who had touched Kate's life in one way or another. ( )

What a treat of a book. The character of Kate was drawn perfectly. The first section of the book was flawless and the remainder still excellent. It wasn't so much a mystery as a study of people and relationships and an exploration of losses among the living when they lose youth's zeal. The novel made me recall my Harriet the Spy days and maybe I should add a star just for that. ( )