lost things

The title of this book gives a pretty good idea about the kind of story you're about to get into, but its also the title of a mysterious book in the story. The Book of Lost Things is, like many of those stories where young people find a doorway into a magical place, is presumably written by the main protagonist after his adventures in the alternate universe he has discovered. The place our young man has found, is decidedly darker and more grim than the more familiar Narnia, Wonderland, or Neverland. The door to this place opens when the when the land of stories begins to bleed into our world.

And that only happens when a young person begins to suffer from sorrow and loss, which can sometimes bring on envy, and even hatred of another young person they've come to blame (wrongly) for their losses. Hmm... if that kind of child on child hatred is something that helps to crack open the door between the worlds, then whatever is drawn to it from the other side can't be good. yeah, its not

John Connolly has put together a pretty creepy book, that reads a little like a young adult story written for adults. Its all the creepiest parts of Grimms Fairy Tales (and other old stories) reimagined as the even nastier 'real' stories that inspired the fairy tales. David brings these stories with him into the world of stories, along with his own demons, and they blend together in a series of adventures that seem to be leading him toward some kind of conclusion.

As David makes his way through this world, meeting, heroes, monsters, witches, and wolves if he's actually heading back toward home, which he says that he wants, or if he is actually being drawn further into an imaginary world he may not be able to escape.

This story is creepy (as I said) wild, funny, satirical, sweet and sometimes sad. Its a lot like the fairy tales that inspired it, as I guess you'd expect. Connolly has done a great job of spinning a yarn that is both familiar and new.

Bonus: The backmatter in this book includes Connolly's analysis of the various fairy tales he used in the story, what he took from them, and then the text of the original fairy tale itself.