The Book of Lost Things (Platinum Readers Circle (Center Point))

by John Connolly

• ISBN10: 074329890X
• ISBN13: 9780743298902
• Publish Date: 16 October 2007 (first published 1 January 2006)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Atria Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 480
• Language: English

Reviews

[bookperson]

Dnf

[lisacee]

I really liked the start of this book, but it just kept going and I had to force myself to finish. It was an allegory wrapped in other allegories.

[rohshey]

*Didn't like this book as much but it did motivate me to sketch*

Take all your favourite fairy tales from your childhood(from odd mixture of Wizard of Oz to Labyrinth to The Never Ending Story to the most sadistic part of Grimm's Fairy Tales), now throw in some well known poems and mix together with a story of a child coming to terms with the death of a parent. And you've pretty much got this. But did it work?


This books is rather dichotomous. There were some really wonderful bits, and there were parts that were just poorly executed. But my biggest grouch was with the predictable and stiff writing.

I almost laughed aloud when I read sentences along the lines of: 'And that was when David truly transitioned from boyhood to manhood.' Whatever happened to the old-fashioned ‘show, don't tell’ rule of writing? Overall it was an Okay and forgettable read.

[empressbrooke]

The Book of Lost Things is basically a fairy tale that pays homage to other fairy tales; the main character David disappears into a magic land after a German bomber plane crashes into his backyard and experiences a multitude of events culled from the books he's read (including, in the book's funniest scene, a book about Communism).

It's a story with many layers and an ambiguous end, which makes it a shame that the last 130 pages of the book are the author's notes and thoughts about the story. Even though at times he says things like, "But that's not the only view to take of that scene," he almost ruins the depth of the book by talking about it too much. I really appreciated that he explained all of the fairy tales that he referenced and provided their original texts - some of them were obscure and I'd never heard of them before. But for him to then analyze why he chose each one and what its elements meant to David, that was just too much. The story stands up perfectly well without him explaining himself, and his readers are surely intelligent enough to make the connections themselves.