The Book of Lost Things

Product Information

John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things is a tale that reflects everyone’s story of growing up. Some would say that it’s a story of losing one’s innocence, but are we ever really innocent? Through time we have come to develop feelings of grief, rage, hatred, and jealousy. These are some of the things that eat the pure off of us. At some point, we have all become the things we feared the most. We have turned into our very own monsters, destroying the good that is ahead of us. This is the story of how David overcame his monsters. Fugue state, formally Dissociative Fugue... usually involves unplanned travel or wandering, and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity. Fugues are usually precipitated by a stressful episode. John Connolly has a vivid imagination with brilliant characters and creates a fun re-appropriation of beloved fairy tales. And David saw himself reflected in the Woodsman's eyes, and there he was no longer old but a young man, for a man is always his father's child no matter how old he is or how long they have been apart.”

What makes The Book of Lost Things so special is the way in which in interacts and adapts a multitude of fairy tales from various sources and blends them all into one big adventure. There’s a lot of ideas here and it’s all brought together in a warped world as a young boy (David) attempts to navigate his way home. The world he has found himself in is an amalgamation of stories and characters and his own dreams. This idea works fantastically well and it’s something a lot of readers will really appreciate. Who doesn't want to ditch reality and escape into a fantasy world?Now, if you consider reading this with or to your children: don't. If I had to set an age limit I would say 13 years, at least. This is some real twisted Coraline shit. Don't mistake it for anything else. Then find routines that allow you to feel secure when they are done. You told me that you have a new brother: look to him each morning. Look to your father, and your stepmother. Tend to the flowers in the garden, or in the pots upon the window sill. Seek others who are weaker than you are, and try to give them comfort where you can. Let these be your routines, and the rules that govern your life.”

We follow David who is mourning his mother and feels betrayed that his father has found a new wife and had a child with her. He starts having seizures and seeing and hearing strange things until he finds himself in a new world - a world so very strange but still familiar, one where he has to fear for his life and will have to be braver than he has ever been. World War II is on, and 12-year old David is mourning the loss of his mother and moving to the home of his father's new wife and their baby son; and all he chooses to have for company is a book collection that has been left in his new room. Yay for books! Finished-6.27.23-this was just as lovely as I remembered it to be. Part coming of age tale and part fairy tale. A wonderful, traditional format; journey to Oz and to home, but Connolly lets it unwind more than a bit toward the end, as he indulges in descriptions of The Crooked Man's evil deeds, in a way that really doesn't matter to the story, and just serves to point out the horrors of the world. Incest, torture, murder, draining away life; in some ways, I too felt my life drained away by this tale, by the cataloguing of misuse of power, the isolationism of a village, the careless mutilation and torture. Instead of uplifted, I felt ground away, like I had been watching a war montage. Connolly is not celebrating childhood or impending adulthood as much as outlining it as a horrible, dastardly trap where the right choices will mean honor and loss, and the wrong choices mean torture and loss. I would recommend it to everyone, because i feel like it's something that must be read at least once in our lives.Don't get me wrong, this book was perfectly alright; it is very readable and well-plotted. The characters and their relationships make sense, the world created is interesting, and the fairy tales are well integrated. I am still dissappointed because it could have been SO much better. The real story ends up being David's abduction into the land of fairy tales by the Crooked Man, a Rumpelstiltskin who makes vicious bargains with emotional children to feed his magical slave house. David starts off his true adventure by following the voice of his dead mother - but don't assume that the story somehow involves David's mother's spirit wandering painfully in the fantasy realm awaiting rescue, this too, in Connolly fashion, is completely irrelevant to the story. Instead, David wanders the fantasy realm accompanied by a series of nearly identical substitute fathers who end up betraying David's trust in one way or another - by being gay in one case (Roland), by being fallible in another (the generic Woodsman). Recently I've taken quite a fancy to fairy tale re-tellings. You can go right ahead and blame Gail Carson Levine for that. The Book of Lost things belongs to that genre, albeit a bit LOT more darker. 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.'"

High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the loss of his mother. He is angry and he is 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 the myths and fairy tales so beloved of his dead mother, he finds that the real world and his fantasy world have begun to meld. As war rages across Europe, David is violently propelled into a land that is both of a construct of his imagination yet frighteningly real, a strange reflection of his own world, composed of myths and stories, populated by wolves, woodsmen, knights, and castles and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious, legendary book, The Book of Lost Things. Stories wanted to be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.” World Building :The world that the author created was absolutely mesmerizing, the world building was impeccable and so well thought of, the writing style is easy to get lost into, I actually felt like i was there, you could feel the magic around you, the air of that forest, and the howling of the wolves, it was detailed enough that you can see the place clearly but not too much that it became boring. ( using too much details can ruin the book for me ) One thing you should know about me, is that I LOVE fairy-tales, especially the ones that contain a dark twist. and oh my .. this book gave me everything.Set in England at the outbreak of WWII, young David loves books and stories. We meet David as he is watches his mother slowly die from illness. When she finally succumbs to death, David is devastated ( I told you book this wasn’t a bright box of sunshine). Eventually, David’s dad gets remarried to a woman named Rose and the three of them move to Rose’s country home where David’s half brother, Georgie, is soon born. David is given the room of Rose’s uncle, Jonathan Tulvey, who shared David’s love of books and stories. Jonathan vanished as a young boy and has never been seen since. The books in Jonathan’s room are old and full of ancient stories and many contain odd notes written by Jonathan.