Book review: Book of Lost Things
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
The death of 12 year old David’s mother does more than uproot his life-it absolutely derails it. Before he can even start sorting out his grief, his father has rather quickly married another woman, and within a span of year he is forced to move into a new house with a new stepmother and-even worse-a new baby brother. To distract himself from the escalating household tension, David distracts himself with his books, and also with exploring the strange, and very old house. There, books talk in whispers and sometimes he glimpses a menacing, crooked figure of an old man poking around in his room. He tries to ignore such alarming signs, knowing that it would make his father even more frustrated with him. But when he hears his mother’s voice begging him to save her, calling from the mysterious sunken garden in the background, he cannot turn away-and instead discovers a land of fairy tales far more dangerous than that which is described in his books.
My thoughts
“She got a taste for their porridge,” said Brother Number One, tapping the side of his nose gently as though he were confiding a great secret to David. “Couldn’t get enough of it. Eventually, the bears just got tired of her, and well, that was that. ‘She ran away into the woods and never went back to the bears’ house again.’ A likely story!”
“You mean…they killed her?” asked David.
“They ate her,” said Brother Number One. With porridge. That’s what ‘ran away and was never seen again’ means in these parts. It means ‘eaten.’”
“Um, and what about ‘happily ever after’?” asked David, a little uncertainly. “What does that mean?”
“Eaten quickly,” said Brother Number One.
--Book of Lost Things, pg. 129
While reading this book, I was continually reminded by Guillermo del Toro’s Spanish-language film, Pan’s Labyrinth. Like the movie, The Book of Lost Things constantly juxtaposes the real and the fantastic, and weaves the two together so convincingly that readers like me can’t decide which is more terrifying. It’s a fairy tale in terms of its surrealism and imaginative aspects, but it’s definitely for a more mature audience-dealing with everything from grief and loss, to love of all kinds, not just the heterosexual kind.
The book not only starts with moving passages of how David’s mother died, but also firmly grounds the story in a realistic world: it is World War II, and England is under constant threat of bombing raids by the Germans. The world is literally falling to pieces around poor David, but all he can think about, of course, is his ailing mother. Since he is only twelve, David strives to fight against death with childlike simplicity, performing his own rituals in the hope that they will keep her alive. And when they fail, as they inevitably do, he cannot but feel that he himself failed: “This new world was too painful to cope with. He had tried so hard. […] He had abided by the rules, but life had cheated. […] David had been brave. His mother had been bravery still. In the end, bravery had not been enough” (14). At a young age, David is already disillusioned.
When he accidentally enters a dangerous world, where fairy tales he read in books have come to life in a more menacing form, he embarks on a quest to save his mother. That’s where the author, John Connolly, brilliantly incorporates familiar, timeless fairy tales, using them as the medium through which David comes of age, learning to be an empathic, brave young man. The neat thing is that he eagerly distorts tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty, adding darker twists that, in an uncanny way, are truer to human nature. For example, in his re-imagining of Hansel and Gretel, the two siblings have been abandoned by their mother in the forest in order to save them from a cruel stepfather. Gretel then successfully saves them from the witch who has trapped them, but her brother is lured again into another trap by a woman who looks just his mother. Of course, he dies. Some losses, Connolly seems to say, simply cannot be got over and learned from.
In the end, The Book of Lost Things is a fairy tale about grief, as contradictory as that sounds. How grief feels, how one fights against it, and eventually, how one can keep on living in spite of it. Maybe, even become a better human being because of it. As fairy tales have always been about elemental themes like good and evil, right and wrong, Connolly makes a great choice in using classic tales as the way in which David learns to grow up, and decides the kind of person he wants to be.
The death of 12 year old David’s mother does more than uproot his life-it absolutely derails it. Before he can even start sorting out his grief, his father has rather quickly married another woman, and within a span of year he is forced to move into a new house with a new stepmother and-even worse-a new baby brother. To distract himself from the escalating household tension, David distracts himself with his books, and also with exploring the strange, and very old house. There, books talk in whispers and sometimes he glimpses a menacing, crooked figure of an old man poking around in his room. He tries to ignore such alarming signs, knowing that it would make his father even more frustrated with him. But when he hears his mother’s voice begging him to save her, calling from the mysterious sunken garden in the background, he cannot turn away-and instead discovers a land of fairy tales far more dangerous than that which is described in his books.
My thoughts
“She got a taste for their porridge,” said Brother Number One, tapping the side of his nose gently as though he were confiding a great secret to David. “Couldn’t get enough of it. Eventually, the bears just got tired of her, and well, that was that. ‘She ran away into the woods and never went back to the bears’ house again.’ A likely story!”
“You mean…they killed her?” asked David.
“They ate her,” said Brother Number One. With porridge. That’s what ‘ran away and was never seen again’ means in these parts. It means ‘eaten.’”
“Um, and what about ‘happily ever after’?” asked David, a little uncertainly. “What does that mean?”
“Eaten quickly,” said Brother Number One.
--Book of Lost Things, pg. 129
While reading this book, I was continually reminded by Guillermo del Toro’s Spanish-language film, Pan’s Labyrinth. Like the movie, The Book of Lost Things constantly juxtaposes the real and the fantastic, and weaves the two together so convincingly that readers like me can’t decide which is more terrifying. It’s a fairy tale in terms of its surrealism and imaginative aspects, but it’s definitely for a more mature audience-dealing with everything from grief and loss, to love of all kinds, not just the heterosexual kind.
The book not only starts with moving passages of how David’s mother died, but also firmly grounds the story in a realistic world: it is World War II, and England is under constant threat of bombing raids by the Germans. The world is literally falling to pieces around poor David, but all he can think about, of course, is his ailing mother. Since he is only twelve, David strives to fight against death with childlike simplicity, performing his own rituals in the hope that they will keep her alive. And when they fail, as they inevitably do, he cannot but feel that he himself failed: “This new world was too painful to cope with. He had tried so hard. […] He had abided by the rules, but life had cheated. […] David had been brave. His mother had been bravery still. In the end, bravery had not been enough” (14). At a young age, David is already disillusioned.
When he accidentally enters a dangerous world, where fairy tales he read in books have come to life in a more menacing form, he embarks on a quest to save his mother. That’s where the author, John Connolly, brilliantly incorporates familiar, timeless fairy tales, using them as the medium through which David comes of age, learning to be an empathic, brave young man. The neat thing is that he eagerly distorts tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty, adding darker twists that, in an uncanny way, are truer to human nature. For example, in his re-imagining of Hansel and Gretel, the two siblings have been abandoned by their mother in the forest in order to save them from a cruel stepfather. Gretel then successfully saves them from the witch who has trapped them, but her brother is lured again into another trap by a woman who looks just his mother. Of course, he dies. Some losses, Connolly seems to say, simply cannot be got over and learned from.
In the end, The Book of Lost Things is a fairy tale about grief, as contradictory as that sounds. How grief feels, how one fights against it, and eventually, how one can keep on living in spite of it. Maybe, even become a better human being because of it. As fairy tales have always been about elemental themes like good and evil, right and wrong, Connolly makes a great choice in using classic tales as the way in which David learns to grow up, and decides the kind of person he wants to be.