What Was Lost: A Novel by Catherine O'Flynn Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of What Was Lost: A Novel
Book Review: Jolly Olde England? Har, har, har!
Summary: 4 Stars
It's 1984 in Thatcher's Britain, and a ten-year-old girl -- an odd, lonely, already alienated child -- is absorbed in fantasies of crime and surveillance, an obsession that seemingly leads to her shocking disappearance, followed by the disappearance of a young man who had suspiciously befriended her.
And then it's twenty years later, and several people whose lives the little girl touched are all working in a mega-mall called Green Oaks, where surveillance is keener and more invasive than anything George Orwell predicted. And that's all I mean to say about the narrative of this first novel prize winner.
The England of 2003, presumably the author's England, is unimaginably depressing -- pathetic and apathetic, podgy, stodgy, and dodgy -- a realm of social and occupational culs-de-sac, walled-off and forgotten corridors and storage rooms in a monster mall of super-stores, where the customers and employees compete in surliness and futility, a mall which inexorably encroaches on all that's left of a shabby once-upon-a-time. The anomie felt by all, ALL, the named characters of the narrative is echoed at the end of each chapter by the whines and snarls of anonymous visitors to the mall. This is the grimmest picture of Life in our consumer society that I've ever read, made all the more grim by the fact that it's written from within, not by an intellectual or a poet or a Martian but by a working-class girl from Birmingham who may well have spent the larger part of her life so far in the Mall. Suicide, alcoholic escapism, couch-potatohood, and gaping idiocy are the full range of options in such a life, though outside the Mall there is also the lurking alternative of skinhead depravity and random destructiveness. I'm glad I live in another time and place.
This is not a completely coherent novel in terms of genre. It begins in the style of a book for "Young Readers" -- for ten-year-old girls, to be precise -- but when the time-zone changes to the future, it quickly assumes the tenor of a pop mystery, replete with scatology and snarky humor. The language is too 'foul' and the mood too dark to make it a book most parents would give their children for birthdays, but then the narrative is followed by a "Reader's Guide" and two pages of utterly smarmy "Questions for Discussion"!!! Do teenagers in the UK sit in classrooms groaning inside themselves while they chirrup dutiful 'reflections' to their hapless, hopeless teachers? Or do socially desperate grown-ups buy this book on the recommendation of Oprah, read half of it, and then sit down over glasses of cheap Sauvignon Blanc and try to impress each other as too bright for present company?
This is an artless book, one that reveals more than its author ever intended, and for that reason all the more powerful, like a painting by a psychotic in an institution that rivals van Gogh or Kokoschka in intensity. I wonder where the author, Catherine O'Flynn, has left herself to go; has she written herself in a corner or will she break out of Green Oaks Mall as she sketchily permits her two protagonists to do? In any case, I'm grateful for the recommendation, from another denizen of Amazoo and his daughter, which led me to read "What Was Lost." I just hope I never wander into O'Flynn's realm of surveillance.
Book Review: Mildy Entertaining
Summary: 3 Stars
I was anticipating a great experience when I picked up "What Was Lost" after reading all the reviews. Unfortunately for me, it was less than I had hoped for. It isn't "thrilling" in any way but it is a well done story that has the unique twist with interesting characters. The plot moves quickly in the beginning with the reader being introduced to Kate Meaney a 12 year old who has had some major loss in her young life and who has invented an imaginary world playing detective which fills the voids and loneliness. The story slows down mid way through and loses it's magic becoming very mundane. In the end, the quirky twist and clever wrap up save the story and perhaps make this worth recommending. I expect great things from Catherine O'Flynn, this was certainly a well done first novel.Book Review: Not Really a Ghost Story
Summary: 4 Stars
For the first sixty-eight pages of this novel I was enchanted. It was fun reading about Kate Meaney and her stuffed monkey as they carried out surveillance as detectives in Birmingham, England's Green Oaks shopping center. (Kat's surveillance notes are fun to read.) Kate's friend becomes Teresa, the classmate who is the class's chief miscreant. It was going to be a fun book that would delight girls twelve and up and cross over into mainstream adult novel territory. Then Kate disappeared off the face of the earth.
I wanted to fall in love with the book, but it wouldn't let me. It became an adult novel with a sudden jolt. Then the Green Oaks shopping center, a hell for its workers, became the central character and the book became a depressing story of young people in dead-end jobs, living without direction, and seniors who were none too happy with their lot in life. There were some fleeting moments of humor among the depiction of lives of futility and quiet desperation.
How do you write about people who are miserable without making the reader miserable and bored? Catherine O'Flynn didn't quite succeed although she is a very sharp writer. The author says, the book is "black humor" and adds, "I don't think of the book as unremittingly bleak," but that's how it seems for most of its length. A line like this increases your descent into downerism; a man is described thusly: "The severe exterior masked nothing but more severity and joylessness." It's not a very flattering portrait of contemporary Britain.
The book deals a great deal with Kurt and the other security guards who patrol the center and watch the place on security cameras. Lisa works at an unsatisfying job in a music store. Years after Kate's disappearance she finds the toy monkey stuffed behind a pipe. Her brother Adrian, much older than Kate, was a friend of Kate's and was suspected of causing her disappearance.
You'll see the book described as a ghost story. Don't be thrown off by this because the paranormal elements will be mitigated by the ending. I would recommend the book because there is a great deal that's well done. I wouldn't reread it because it's too much of a downer for me.
Book Review: Not my type of story
Summary: 1 Stars
The child's talking and adventures at the mall went way too far into the book, which became very irritating, the middle of the book was boring, the end of the book predictable. Good writing, 1* story.Book Review: Not perfect....but no "4" either
Summary: 4 Stars
Rarely do I find a book I can't put down...but this was one of them. Although I didn't want to savor every page, I wanted to know what was next without hesitation. The first part of the book is heartbreakingly sweet and funny. After that it is heartbreaking in its sadness and struggles. There are odd little breaks where random people's thoughts on randoms subjects are explored. I wanted them to make sense in the long run - but they didn't. They make this book less then great - but I definately recommend this book to anyone in love with a well written, imaginative, and memorable story.