The Book of Lost Things

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Connolly's "Book of Lost Things" came highly recommended as a modern take on the fantasy genre. What I found instead was a completely unlikeable main character, an array of interchangeable father figures, and a disappointing rehash of the usual fairy tale parodies. the use of revisionism is, sadly, not always successful. a comic interlude with the socialist Seven Dwarves and an obese, monstrous Snow White is depressingly unfunny and a little desperate (at least to this reader). and a long part near the end, depicting various torture chambers and examples of The Crooked Man's terrible villainy seems to be merely an excuse for Connolly to indulge himself with a gloatingly vicious array of sadistic tableau. both sequences were eye-rolling and sigh-inducing. David had an opportunity to examine its face as it hovered: it resembled a woman's but was longer and thinner, with a lipless mouth that left its sharp teeth permanently exposed. Now those teeth tore into its prey, ripping great chunks of bloody fur from its body as it fed."

Trust me, after reading this book, the above image of a sadistic, powerful, child-slaughtering MOFO will forever displace your previous perception of old Rumpy being nothing more than a half pint, mischievous prankster with ethical deficiencies…As a final note, to myself and those who follow the humanist footpath: I do not think Connolly loves females overmuch. Because, wow. Aside from the idolized but dead mother, the doomed deer-girl, and a friendly female horse, there is absolutely nothing to love here about females. I'm going to list it here, because I'm not going to ever re-read this book, and someday, someone will ask why: the dead mother. The Loups born from Red Riding Hood's sex. The harpies. The grossly fat, selfish Snow White. The Evil Huntress obsessed with finding the perfect prey. The Evil Enchantress asleep behind the wall of thorns. The girl in a jar, about as close as one comes to a refrigerator in a non-refrigerator world. 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. I didn't have any problem or inconvenience regarding this book, everything is so well done and brilliant, which made the experience of reading this book so vivid. i also enjoyed the dark fairy-tales included in this book, it's something different, in a good way of course. The characters : I loved all the characters in this book, they seemed so real. and i absolutely ADORED David, all his flaws made him more relatable and more human, in this story I believe we follow him in a journey of finding himself rather than finding his mother .

I believe in those whom I love and trust. All else is foolishness. This god is as empty as his church. His followers choose to attribute all of their good fortune to him, but when he ignores their pleas or leaves them to suffer, they say only that he is beyond their understanding and abandon themselves to his will. What kind of god is that?”If you like Stephen King's earlier works and are a fan of old fairy tales, then you'll love this book. It was creepy at times but never overwhelmingly scary. This reading group guide for The Book of Lost Things includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book. This life is filled with threats and danger, David. We face those that we have to face, and there will be times when we must make the choice to act for the greater good, even at risk to ourselves, but we do not lay down our lives needlessly. Each of us has only one life to live, and one life to give. There is no glory in throwing it away where there is no hope.”

Throughout the time that David lives in the imaginary world, his dreams are influenced by fairy tales, as well as the real-world personal and cultural tragedies that he came from. While David’s dead mother certainly plays a large role, which aspects of his life have a great impact on his dream world? Discuss the interaction of the real world and the imagined. What conflicts arise and how does David’s dream deal with these conflicts? John Connolly’s 2006 revisionist fantasy will draw many comparisons due to it’s fable / mythical themes. Most notably will be a comparison to CS Lewis’ Narnia books since this is set in England during WWII and our young protagonist finds his way into an alternate world. It’s alternate fairy tales will also draw comparison to both Gregory Maguire and L. Frank Baum. The urban fantasy parts made me also think of Charles de Lint’s fine work. 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.While Rose is nice and tries to form a bond with David, he finds himself increasingly angry at her and his new half-brother. He spends more and more time among the old books which begin to whisper to him and David starts to witness strange occurrences, including the appearance of a “crooked man” watching him. Before she came ill, David's mother would often tell him that stories were alive. They weren't alive in the way that people were alive, or even dogs or cats. (...) Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by torch light beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world. (...) 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.” John Connolly is best known as a respected writer of an excellent detective series. his strengths have been widely reported: gorgeously dark and lush descriptive skills, a sensitive portrayal of private eye Charlie Parker - an unusually tormented protagonist (tragic even for a genre noted for its sad, sad heroes), and a unsettling ability to mix the prosaic with the supernatural to startling effect. in this book, Connolly takes each of those gifts and streamlines them in a way that is appropriate for the reader of young adult or even children's literature - although this novel is very clearly an Adult Fairy Tale. the result is pleasingly distinctive. there are many scenes that are striking in their psychosocial nuance, their foreboding atmosphere, their ability to evoke that wonderfully shivery feeling of fearful anticipation. my favorite passage happens early on: David's daunting entry into the strange fantasy world... an eerie vignette that is a model of careful, suspenseful writing, featuring unearthly quiet, child-like flowers, a a taciturn Woodsman, the smoking remains of the german bomber, bleeding trees, a house in the woods with a Giger-like exterior, and a gathering of evil wolfish beings. but those are aberrations; despite them, Connolly more than succeeds in creating delightful and intriguing reinterprations of figures from fairy and folk tale. even better, David's character is a slow-burning but dynamic one, changing in bits and starts from boy to man with each new encounter. he is a realistically flawed protagonist as well as a brave and endearing little hero. 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.