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What Was Lost A Novel Catherine O'Flynn 9780805088335 Books

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What Was Lost A Novel Catherine O'Flynn 9780805088335 Books

When I turned the final page of this book, I thought about how much I liked the story. Saying that, I am giving this 4 stars because I thought there were parts (the middle!) that were a slow-go for me.

Summary, no spoilers:

The book starts out in 1984, and we follow the escapades of 10 year old Kate Meaney. She is a precocious, imaginative, but lonely little girl, who decides that she wants to open up a detective agency with a partner - her toy stuffed animal, a monkey named Mickey. Her only real friends are a rebellious schoolmate, and a young man named Adrian, who lives next door.

Kate decides the best place to scope out the criminals is the local mall, Green Oaks. She spends most of her free time there, trying to spy on the would-be robbers and criminals, copiously taking notes.

The next section of book takes place in 2003, and we know that Kate had disappeared without a trace back in 1984. We learn about the repercussions from that, and we are introduced to Lisa, Adrian's sister who works at the Green Oaks Mall's music store, and Kurt, the security guard there.

I thought the first section of this novel was absolutely riveting, and I just loved Kate. When I got to the second section, I just couldn't get as interested in Lisa and Kurt, and I found myself wanting to hurry on to find out what happened to Kate. I found this whole part of the novel a slow read.

But for that, I would've given this book 5 stars, because the denouement is just fantastic, and poignant. When I was done with the book, I was happy I had read it, and I was very satisfied with the story.

Recommended, and if you find yourself slowing down mid-book, hang in there. There's a big payoff at the end.


Tags : What Was Lost: A Novel [Catherine O'Flynn] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>A tender and sharply observant debut novel about a missing young girl―winner of the Costa First Novel Award and long-listed for the Booker Prize,Catherine O'Flynn,What Was Lost: A Novel,Holt Paperbacks,0805088334,Mystery & Detective - General,Birmingham (England),Missing persons,Missing persons;Fiction.,Mystery fiction,Shopping centers,Shopping centers;Fiction.,Teenage girls - England,Teenage girls;England;Fiction.,ENGLISH MYSTERY & SUSPENSE FICTION,England,FICTION Mystery & Detective General,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Coming of Age,Fiction General,Fiction-Mystery & Detective,GENERAL,General Adult,Great BritainBritish Isles,Literary,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),MysterySuspense,Teenage girls,United States

What Was Lost A Novel Catherine O'Flynn 9780805088335 Books Reviews

This is the debut novel of a very talented writer. It is a working class mystery set in the industrial ruins of the English Midlands and in a shopping mall in Birmingham. The story is set in two time zones 1984 and 19 years later.

I would bet that Ms.O'Flynn didn't choose 1984 for nothing. England is one of the countries with the highest surveillance levels in the world, closed circuit television is everywhere. One of the main characters of the later events is a security guard who spends hours every day looking at CCTV screens in the mall. He sees something on a screen at night, which leads to events from the past, the vanishing without trace of a precocious 10 year old girl, a loner and `amateur detective' (due to a gift from her father, a guide `how to be a private investigator'). He teams up with a young woman who works in a music shop in the mall, whose brother had disappeared a little later than the little girl, when he was 22.

This writer knows what she is writing about. Her descriptions of places and events are down to earth. Her working life scenes have a distinctly Dilbertian quality. She can be humorous without annoying me and she knows when to drop it. Her scenes from family life are full of cynical wisdom about the real world. (What is the point of life? Wasting time until you die.)

How did I pick this up? In my shelves, I have different waiting hills of books. One consists of books that my daughter thinks I must read. She is not always right, but in this case I agree with her.
Catherine O'Flynn does such a good job of delaying important information about characters and their situation that it is almost impossible to review her fine first novel, WHAT WAS LOST, without giving something away. Let me just say that it is set near Birmingham, England, and involves two time periods, 1984 and 2003. In the first, we meet a ten-year-old girl, Kate Meaney, and her older friend Adrian. Kate leads a fantasy life as a detective, mostly observing people at the huge Green Oaks Mall. Though a college graduate, 22-year-old Adrian works behind the counter in his father's newsagent's shop; he is inspired by Kate's energy, but also seems to have a special understanding of her loneliness.

The 2003 sections are set almost entirely in the Mall. The two chief characters there are Lisa, who is assistant manager of a CD and video store, and Kurt, one of the security guards. Their connection with the 1984 story emerges only gradually, in the midst of an account of their frustrating dead-end jobs, their sometimes-comic relationships with their co-workers, and their discovery of one another. It is particularly interesting to see behind the scenes at the Mall, and visit the miles of unpainted concrete block corridors behind the glittering facades. The place becomes a metaphor for life, with most of the characters in the book inhabiting its unglamorous underside. But the people themselves are not uninteresting; indeed, the bleaker their environment, the more we get drawn into their lives as people.

Catherine O'Flynn says that she herself played detective as a child, and worked in a mall music store as an adult, jotting down notes that became the material for much of this book. Perhaps too much; there are times in both periods when the narrative thread is almost lost in the proliferation of anecdote. But this is an engaging book, and when the author pulls the two plot strands together (albeit with the aid of a few coincidences and a tinge of the supernatural) towards the end, it also becomes quite a moving one.
When I turned the final page of this book, I thought about how much I liked the story. Saying that, I am giving this 4 stars because I thought there were parts (the middle!) that were a slow-go for me.

Summary, no spoilers

The book starts out in 1984, and we follow the escapades of 10 year old Kate Meaney. She is a precocious, imaginative, but lonely little girl, who decides that she wants to open up a detective agency with a partner - her toy stuffed animal, a monkey named Mickey. Her only real friends are a rebellious schoolmate, and a young man named Adrian, who lives next door.

Kate decides the best place to scope out the criminals is the local mall, Green Oaks. She spends most of her free time there, trying to spy on the would-be robbers and criminals, copiously taking notes.

The next section of book takes place in 2003, and we know that Kate had disappeared without a trace back in 1984. We learn about the repercussions from that, and we are introduced to Lisa, Adrian's sister who works at the Green Oaks Mall's music store, and Kurt, the security guard there.

I thought the first section of this novel was absolutely riveting, and I just loved Kate. When I got to the second section, I just couldn't get as interested in Lisa and Kurt, and I found myself wanting to hurry on to find out what happened to Kate. I found this whole part of the novel a slow read.

But for that, I would've given this book 5 stars, because the denouement is just fantastic, and poignant. When I was done with the book, I was happy I had read it, and I was very satisfied with the story.

Recommended, and if you find yourself slowing down mid-book, hang in there. There's a big payoff at the end.