What Was Lost

Anchor Canada, 2008. Prerelease version. From Starred Review. Stirring and beautifully crafted, this debut novel recounts how the repercussions of a girl's disappearance can last for decades. In 1984, Kate Meaney is a 10-year-old loner who solves imaginary mysteries and guesses the dark secrets of the shoppers she observes at the Green Oaks mall. Kate's unlikely circle includes her always-present stuffed monkey; 22-year-old Adrian, who works at the candy shop next door; and Kate's classmate, Teresa Stanton, who hides her intelligence behind disruptive behavior. Kate's grandmother has plans for Kate: send her to boarding school. But Kate doesn't want to go. forward to 2003, where it's revealed through Lisa, Adrian's sister, that Kate disappeared nearly 20 years ago, and Adrian, blamed in her disappearance, also vanished. Lisa works at a record store in Green Oaks and is drawn to Kurt, a security guard whose surveillance-camera sightings of a little girl clutching a stuffed monkey hint that he might have ties to Kate's disappearance. Teresa, meanwhile, now a detective, has her own reasons for being haunted by Kate's disappearance. Gripping to the end, the is both a chilling mystery and a poignant examination of the effects of loss and loneliness. (July) ¬ Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition. Review"Skewers our consumer society in all its absurdity and terrible sadness, while deftly interweaving a tender and heartbreaking personal narrative. A great debut novel from an awesomely talented writer."-Jonathan Coe "An exceptional, polyphonic novel of urban disaffection, written with humour and pathos. Kate's deceptively jaunty diary reveals a consumer-driven society choking on its own loneliness; a ghost story; and an examination of unspeakable loss."-Guardian (UK) "An enthralling tale of a little girl lost, wrapped in a portrait of a changing community over two decades. What binds it all together so impressively is O'Flynn's emotional articulacy, which captures life's sad, strange absurdities and glosses them with a kind of nobility."-Observer (UK). Paperback. Fine.