Finished it in one day!

books:

	• What Was Lost: A Novel Catherine O'Flynn Holt Paperbacks, 2008 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 21 reviews view larger image
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Finished it in one day!

A really good book with many keen observations. The characters really come to life. The book is a good mix of sadness, comedy, and hope!

Down at the Mall

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.

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Mildy Entertaining

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.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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, the Orange Prize, and The Guardian First Book Award

In the 1980s, Kate Meaney??Top Secret? notebook and toy monkey in tow?is hard at work as a junior detective. Busy trailing ?suspects? and carefully observing everything around her at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping mall, she forms an unlikely friendship with Adrian, the son of a local shopkeeper. But when this curious, independent-spirited young girl disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion and is hounded out of his home by the press.

Then, in 2003, Adrian?s sister Lisa?stuck in a dead-end relationship?is working as a manager at Your Music, a discount record store. Every day she tears her hair out at the outrageous behavior of her customers and colleagues. But along with a security guard, Kurt, she becomes entranced by the little girl glimpsed on the mall?s surveillance cameras. As their after-hours friendship intensifies, Lisa and Kurt investigate how these sightings might be connected to the unsettling history of Green Oaks itself. Written with warmth and wit, What Was Lost is a haunting debut from an incredible new talent.

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