What Was Lost

Was out at a stag party last night and woke up this morning with a bugger of a hangover and a lingering dose of the booze blues. As a result, most of today has been spent indoor reading the papers, drinking endless pots of tea and wasting time on youtube (see below). It hasn't been a completely wasted day however because I finished reading Catherine O'Flynn's What Was Lost this evening. Apart from the cover, which at first glance looks like another chicklit novel (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course) it's a fantastic book.

It begins in 1984. A young girl, Kate, who's obsessed with detective work, wanders around her town and neighbourhod carrying a notebook and documenting every suspicious character she sees. Gradually we're told of her family and friends and school background, and of the Green Oaks shopping centre, which she visits every day.. Then the story comes back to the present day (well 2004) and the introduction of 2 people who work at Green Oaks. Kurt, a security guard and Lisa, an assistant manager in a record shop. They both have a connection to Kate who it turns out disappeared 20 years earlier and was never seen again.

From the beginning, Kurt and Lisa are portrayed in such a way, and with such insight that it's easy to identify with them. It's not so much a novel about the disappearance of a child as it is a novel about the disappearance of hope and how people live with the pain and isolation the hopelessness brings. How the consequences of our actions or inactions can haunt us. The people in the shopping centre (each chapter ends with an anonymous account from various shoppers and employees in the centre) and the mundanity of their lives is outlined in such a way that you can't help feeling for them and hoping that they can find a way out..

The ending seems a little rushed but for the most part it just motors along, feeding us information as we need it and letting us wait for the rest or imagine it for ourselves. And right at the end, after everything has been resolved (in as much as anything is resolved - this is real life after all) there's an account from Kate's notebook written just before she disappeared. It's heartbreaking.

I can't recommend it enough.