What Was Lost: A Novel
by Catherine O'Flynn
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Book Reviews of What Was Lost: A Novel
Book Review: Did not like it
Summary: 2 Stars
I was swayed by favorable reviews of this author's most recent book, The News Where You Are, but decided to first read her debut novel, which won the Costa Book Award for best first novel in 2008, and was also long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2007. Suffice to say, I decided the long list for the Booker Prize must be a very long list.
The author has penned an essay at the end of the book where she admits having worked at a record store in a shopping mall, and keeping notes, not anticipating they would end up becoming a novel. And so they've become. All the human characters in this novel are peripheral to the shopping mall, which is the main (but unfortunately, a non-living, passive protagonist), and book is primarily a vessel to convey the author's mostly negative --and not entirely original-- observations about shopping malls and people who visit or shop in them. Parts of the plot (like Adrian's method of communicating with his sister Lisa, and Kurt's talk with his dad, the incident on High St involving Kurt's mother, and Adrian's final act) and many of side characters (Kate's grandmother, the shopkeepers, Lisa's boyfriend, Kurt's sister, and, yes, the woman with the empty stroller!) felt very contrived.
Kate is obviously smart and full of insight for her age (about 9-10). But passages like this confused me:
"Kate had a gruesome image of teachers from competing schools bidding for injured children at the local hospital and ascribing a range of childhood misdemeanors to them. 'I've got a paraplegic little girl here, ideal for stamping out leaning back on chairs.' 'How about this almost blind-boy, ideal for carrot promotion?'" (p. 55). Is Kate at her tender age capable of constructing such a scenario, even if it is imaginary, of other children and teachers, using that precise a language? Maybe I'm wrong: I have not observed enough 9-year olds.
The plot twist revealed towards the end with regards to Teresa is almost believable (that Kate can come up with such a plan on the spot), yet it is not as easy to swallow that noone looked into the events of the day of Kate's disappearance more closely in relation to the Redspoon exam.
I was also not impressed by the writing or style. There is not much literary effort here.
One star would be too harsh I think, since I was curious enough to finish the book. So two stars it is.
Book Review: Not Really a Ghost Story
Summary: 4 Stars
For the first sixty-eight pages of this novel I was enchanted. It was fun reading about Kate Meaney and her stuffed monkey as they carried out surveillance as detectives in Birmingham, England's Green Oaks shopping center. (Kat's surveillance notes are fun to read.) Kate's friend becomes Teresa, the classmate who is the class's chief miscreant. It was going to be a fun book that would delight girls twelve and up and cross over into mainstream adult novel territory. Then Kate disappeared off the face of the earth.
I wanted to fall in love with the book, but it wouldn't let me. It became an adult novel with a sudden jolt. Then the Green Oaks shopping center, a hell for its workers, became the central character and the book became a depressing story of young people in dead-end jobs, living without direction, and seniors who were none too happy with their lot in life. There were some fleeting moments of humor among the depiction of lives of futility and quiet desperation.
How do you write about people who are miserable without making the reader miserable and bored? Catherine O'Flynn didn't quite succeed although she is a very sharp writer. The author says, the book is "black humor" and adds, "I don't think of the book as unremittingly bleak," but that's how it seems for most of its length. A line like this increases your descent into downerism; a man is described thusly: "The severe exterior masked nothing but more severity and joylessness." It's not a very flattering portrait of contemporary Britain.
The book deals a great deal with Kurt and the other security guards who patrol the center and watch the place on security cameras. Lisa works at an unsatisfying job in a music store. Years after Kate's disappearance she finds the toy monkey stuffed behind a pipe. Her brother Adrian, much older than Kate, was a friend of Kate's and was suspected of causing her disappearance.
You'll see the book described as a ghost story. Don't be thrown off by this because the paranormal elements will be mitigated by the ending. I would recommend the book because there is a great deal that's well done. I wouldn't reread it because it's too much of a downer for me.
Book Review: Could not put it down.....
Summary: 5 Stars
Oh wow - what an amazing little gem this book was! This was O'Flynn's debut novel. She's got a fan here that will be looking for her second.
The novel opens in 1984 and we meet nine year old Kate Meaney. She is a bit of a loner, preferring adults to children her own age. One of her favourite adults is Adrian, the son of a local shopkeeper. Kate is determined to be a detective. This is the driving force of her days. She carries a notebook and makes observations of all the people and situations she comes across. She has staked out both her neighbourhood and the new mall, Green Oaks. She decides to concentrate her time on Green Oaks. She shares her sleuthing dutiher little stuffed monkey. Until....she disappears.
O`Flynn's portrayal of this little girl is amazing. Her determination, earnestness, and curious mind are all vividly painted with words. I was somewhat reminded of Christopher - the main character in the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. (Another really good read!)
Fast forward to 2003 at the Green Oaks Mall. It has expanded and is very large now. Kurt works as a security guard on the night shift. One night he inexplicably see a young girl with a stuffed monkey on the security camera. When he searches, she is gone. Lisa, Adrian's sister works at a music store in the mall. Working late one night, she gets lost in the staff only corridors and finds a stuffed monkey lodged down by a pipe.
Lisa and Kurt are both lonely and feel their lives are empty. They meet and their lives become connected by a long missing little girl. The development of the characters of Lisa and Kurt is excellent. As with Kate, you immediately feel a real sense of their lives.
Having worked in retail hell for many years, I found O'Flynn's descriptions of the mall, it's workers and customers to be spot on, very funny at times, but also very sad.
This book is as much about the mystery of what happened to Kate as it is about Karl and Lisa reclaiming their lives.
O'Flynn was listed for many prizes for this debut novel - and rightly so!
Book Review: superb thriller
Summary: 5 Stars
In 1984 in the Birmingham, England area, ten years old orphan Kate Meaney, accompanied by her sidekick a stitched stuffed monkey pretends to be a private investigator. The preadolescent especially keeps an eye out for criminal activity in Green Oaks shopping center near her home. When she is not sleuthing, Kate spends time at the sweetshop next door to her home discussing music with twenty-two tears old Adrian, the son of the owner. Her grandmother who raises Kate directs her to take an exam to gain entrance to a boarding school. Adrian takes her there, but no one sees Kate again. The police suspect Adrian of murder as they cannot comprehend a friendship between the tweener and the adult, but have no evidence to prove their case. However, the neighborhood condemns Adrian forcing him to move away.
Two decades later on a CCTV monitor Green Oaks night shift security guard Kurt Jump notices a girl wandering seemingly lost holding a stuffed monkey. He rushes over to where he saw her, but no one is there. Not long after that Kurt mentions the girl with the monkey to Your Music store manager Lisa, Adrian's sister. They begin a search for the girl as Lisa hopes to solve the disappearance of Kate that destroyed her family especially her forced exiled brother.
WHAT WAS LOST is a superb thriller that uses a mall, especially what happens outside the shops, as a terrific backdrop to a fascinating mystery. In many ways Green Oaks is a major character as the audience learns its economic impact on a blue collar neighborhood in which factory workers are forced to accept shop jobs at extremely diminished income; a subtle slap at the gurus who insist the economy is strong as everyone is working. The atmosphere of the non-shops is a part of the mall that is dark and gloomy at least through the surveillance cameras. With the mall playing a key role and Lisa and Kurt jumping into the cold case seeking the truth, the bottom line is fans will need to know the answer to the title question.
Harriet Klausner
Book Review: A strong debut novel
Summary: 4 Stars
I am in a bit of a dilemma when reviewing this book: there is something I really want to say but I don't want to lessen the shock. I will just ask you to focus a moment on the title and consider what the surprise will be, and that's all I am going to say. The book is published by the brilliant Indie Press Tindal Street, they have had many award winners from their ranks so don't be put off by the fact they don't publish the likes of Dan Brown.
Without giving anything away the book opens in 1984 and follows the story of young Kate as she sets up her own detective agency. Kate spies on other people's lives and her investigations become a release from her own tragedies. O'Flynn captures the child's voice brilliantly. I was hooked by this sympathetic outsider and her strange investigations at the local Green Oak shopping Centre. There is then a huge leap of time and character in the book, a brave move by the writer but one she pulls of with panache. The reader suddenly finds themselves in 2003, the same shopping centre but something is missing...
Most of the second half of the novel follows Kurt and Lisa who both work at Green Oaks. I loved the witty descriptions of the soulless shopping centre and the cattle like shoppers. Anyone who has ever been trapped in a shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon and wished they were rather laid up in bed with a broken leg will instantly recognise the writer's sharp character portraits and bleak scenery. This is a masterful whodunit. I was gripped from the opening pages but as soon as Kurt, the security guard at the centre, sees a grainy image on the CCTV my stomach flipped and I was sold. This is O'Flynn's debut novel and I can't wait to read more.... I hope she's a fast writer.
Other debut novels I would recommend:
The Separate Principle
A Breathless Hush in the Close