book review: the Book of Lost Things

This book is an excellent book. It's a beautifully-written book about a boy, David, whose mother passes away. His father remarries and has a baby, whom David resents. As a lover of books, stories and tales, David soon takes refuge in his books. One night, he wanders into the sunken garden not far from his house, and finds himself in a strange land. Then, it reads like a fairytale--filled with beasts, knights, wolves; interwoven with classic tales of Snow White and the Little Red Riding Hood, albeit with a twist. In this book, Snow White is a fat, ugly woman who puts on white make-up, who is being taken care of by six communist dwarfs who are on a strike against capitalism. Little Riding Hood is not threatened by a nasty old wolf who eats her grandmother. Instead, in this story, Little Red Riding Hood chases after the wolf who tries fruitlessly to escape her. At last, he faces up to her after her relentless pursuits--and they make love and produce a breed called Loups (half-wolf, half-man). There's also a Huntress who captures animals and breeds them with little children, producing deer with the head of a girl, little boys with the heads of foxes, and things like that. After she releases them into the wild, she hunts them for fun.

These are just some of the things that capture your attention and force you to keep flipping the pages just to see what happens. Connolly has a captivating writing style--almost poetic in nature. Yet, he manages to evoke the story as a simple one being told from the lips of a little boy. For all its simplicity, there are many deeper lessons to be learned from the story.

The narrative is well-paced. The plot is believable. And the language is simply lovely. Reading this book will transport you back to a time when your innocence still remained, and you once feared hidden monsters underneath the bed. Read this book. It's well worth it.