The Book Of Lost Things

I am a huge John Connolly fan, I was hooked from the first few pages of his first novel Every Dead Thing, and although this book wasn't part of the Charlie Parker series I wanted to read it.

Synopsis

Set during the war, the story follows David who is a young boy who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder, he is compelled to tap items such as the tap an even number of times before and after he uses them. He does this in the hope it will help his mother, who is very ill. Unfortunately for David it doesn't work and his mother dies.

Not long after her death his father takes up with another woman, David doesn't like her because he thinks his father is betraying his mother's memory. David is forced to move away from the house he grew up in, and where the memories of his mother reside, when his father moves into the home belonging to his father's girlfriend (Rose). Eventually his father gets remarried and pretty soon David has a half brother.

David feels alone in this new situation and he is angry at the world, and is angry at his new brother Georgie. After a huge fight with Rose, David is lying in his bed, when he hears the voice of his mother calling him. He follows the voice as it leads him through the garden, but suddenly a german bomber is hurtling towards him and he dives into a gap in a tree truck to avoid it. The gap in the tree is a passage though to another world.

A world ruled by a king who has lost control, and full of mysterious monsters and strange fairytale creatures.

My Thoughts

Th first word that springs to mind when I think of this book is strange, but it's then changed to strangely compelling. The story is weird to say the very least, but it's the sort of story that you just have to carry on reading because you just don't know what's going to crop up next.

Some things are really amusing like the alternative Snow White who's a total chav hag and the dwarves who are uptight about perceived sizism. Then other parts are quite disturbing, for example the use of lost children to fuse with the bodies of animals in order to hunt for sport, or Red Riding Hood sleeping with wolves to create a wolf/human hybrid.

The book also raises the issues of how parents deal with the death of another parent, in this case David's father cared little about David and his feelings, and was only interested in his life and how he was affected. This is a situation many real life children of David's age find themselves in, and as with David, many find themselves shoved to the sidelines as the new partner and partner's children take centre stage.

Connolly adapts very well to this new style of book, and makes the book just as interesting and compelling as the Charlie Parker series.
Because his writing is so good I felt a great deal of sympathy for David, as well as some of the characters who helped David on his journey, and Connolly can also make you really detest the bad guys.

I would definitely recommend this book, but on the basis you are buying a great fiction novel, not on the basis that you're buying a John Connolly book, because it's so far removed from his others, you might find yourself disappointed if you're hoping for anything similar to Charlie Parker.