BOOK #4
Monday, 01/22/07 to Sunday, 01/28/07
ISBN-10: 0743298853
ISBN-13: 978-0743298858
At its most basic, The Book of Lost Things is about a young, English boy in WWII times facing not only the war but the death of his mother and the arrival of a stepmom and new baby brother. Books (especially books about fairy tales) become his escape. Seems straight-forward enough, but there's a twist: David, the boy, escapes further and further into his fantasy land. In giving life to that fantasy land, Connolly takes familiar fairly tales, jumbles them up, and then modifies them in a waaaaay out-there fashion. I would most readily describe the result as "a fairy tale on crack." Really.
Book Description:
New York Times bestselling author John Connolly's unique imagination takes readers through the end of innocence into adulthood and beyond in this dark and triumphantly creative novel of grief and loss, loyalty and love, and the redemptive power of stories.
High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother. He is angry and alone, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in his imagination, he finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a land that is a strange reflection of his own world, populated by heroes and monsters, and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book... The Book of Lost Things.
An imaginative tribute to the journey we must all make through the loss of innocence into adulthood, John Connolly's latest novel is a book for every adult who can recall the moment when childhood began to fade, and for every adult about to face that moment. The Book of Lost Things is a story of hope for all who have lost, and for all who have yet to lose. It is an exhilarating tale that reminds us of the enduring power of stories in our lives.
About the Author:
John Connolly is the author of Every Dead Thing, Dark Hollow, The Killing Kind, The White Road, Bad Men, Nocturnes, and The Black Angel. He is a regular contributor to The Irish Times and lives in Dublin, Ireland. For more information see his website at www.johnconnolly.co.uk.
The thing I most appreciated about The Book of Lost Things is the way Connolly personifies books - or the stories contained in them - and gives them life:
David's mother once said that his father used to read a lot of books but had fallen out of the habit of losing himself in stories. Now he preferred his newspapers, with their long columns of print, each letter painstakingly laid out by hand to create something that would lose its relevance almost as soon as it appeared on the newsstands, the news within already old and dying by the time it was read, quickly overtaken by events in the world beyond.
The stories in books hate the stories contained in newspapers, David's mother would say. Newspaper stories were like newly caught fish, worthy of attention only for as long as they remained fresh, which was not very long at all. They were like the street urchins hawking the evening editions, all shouty and insistent, while stories - real stories, proper made-up stories - were like stern but helpful librarians in a well-stocked library. Newspaper stories were as insubstantial as smoke, as long-lived as mayflies. They did not take root but were instead like weeds that crawled along the ground, stealing the sunlight from more deserving tales. David's father's mind was always occupied by shrill, competing voices, each one silenced as soon as he gave it his attention, only for its clamor to be instantly replaced by another. That's what David's mother would whisper to him with a smile, while his father scowled and bit his pipe, aware that they were talking about him but unwilling to give them the pleasure of knowing they were irritating him.
And, amid the jumbled fairy tales, Connolly throws in some deep commentary on life, loss, and religion:
This life is filled with threats and danger, David. We face those that we have to face, and there will be times when we must make the choice to act for a greater good, even at risk to ourselves, but we do not lay down our lives needlessly. Each of us has only one life to live, and one life to give. There is no glory in throwing it away where there is no hope.
__________
"What do you believe in?" asked David.
"I believe in those whom I love and trust. All else is foolishness. This god is as empty as his church. His followers choose to attribute all of their good fortune to him, but when he ignores their pleas or leaves them to suffer, they say only that he is beyond their understanding and abandon themselves to his will. What king of good is that?"
__________
"You think he is dead, don't you?" he said softly.
"Yes," answered Roland. "I feel it in my heart."
"But you have to find out what happened to him."
"I will know no peace until I do."
"But you may die as well. If you follow his path, you could end up just as he did. Aren't you afraid of dying?"
Roland took a stick and poked at the fire, sending sparks flying upward into the night. They fizzled out before they got very far, like insects that were already being consumed by the flames even as they struggled to escape them.
"I am afraid of the pain of dying," he said. "I have been wounded brfore, once so badly that it was feared I would not survive. I can recall the agony of it, and I don't wish to endure it again.
"But I feared more the death of others, I did not want to lose them, and I worried about them while they were alive. Sometimes, I think I concerned myself with so much with the possibility of their loss that I never truly took pleasure in the fact of their existence."
