A review by literautres
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 
“stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling. (…) they were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. they lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge. once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. they could take root in the imagination, and transform the reader. 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.”


‘the book of lost things’ is a story about a boy named david whose mother has just passed away. while still mourning and trying to deal with the overwhelming grief that comes with it, his father marries another woman and now he is suddenly living in a new house, a new room, and with a new baby brother. between battling with his sadness, loneliness and anger, david takes comfort in books and the world of stories.

however the books start to ‘talk’ to him, taking the form of voices of whispers in the dark and a mysterious black figure that often appears in david’s window, and one day even in david’s room, making the border between imagination and reality even more blurred and blend into each other. when david’s life feels like it is even more ruined, at the same time, david falls into a huge pit of darkness that is the gate of another world where dangers and strange, blood-thirsty creatures lurk and threaten him from every corner.

this was a wild and intense journey. the first pages that portray how david tried to cope with her mother’s sickness and death was hard to go through as well. there is this intense depiction on david’s OCD, that started to occur during her mother’s illness and only gotten worse after she passed away, which just shattered my heart. david delving into stories as a form of escapism is also something that is painfully relatable, and i believe a lot of us dived head first into reading for this very reason. reading this during quarantine while i was sick with covid was a much needed distraction, takes form in a great and enthralling story.

i love the twisted fairytales in it too. never thought i could read a version of snow white where she is actually the villain enslaving the dwarfs and the dwarfs plotting revenge after revenge (they just keep failing, idk). some of them are quite gore—that woman who mutilated animals to combine them into a completely different creature, very much horrifying and a complete nightmare, reminded me of dr. moreau btw. safe to say david went through SO MUCH in both worlds. how was he able to go through that without losing his head completely (figuratively and literally) is beyond me. although actually not really, since he was driven by strong will (albeit a bit delusional—his delusion was caused by insurmountable grief though (and black magic) do not blame the boy) to find her mother who was actually already passed away.

there is so much in this story, the transcendental portrayal of what grief can do to a person, how one can be so enslaved in envy and greed in a much terrifying level one can expect, the desperation of a child, the cluelessness and naivety of parental figure (and yet it is needed so badly), and the most important of all, the magic and the power of stories and imagination.
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pre-review

THAT WAS SUCH A GOOD STORY HUHU its a story within stories just wow. rtc 
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