Blue Archipelago

The Book of Lost Things - Buy this book

Rating

5 stars - I’d give it more if I could!

Description - from Amazon

As twelve-year-old David takes refuge from his grief in the myths and fairy tales so beloved of his dead mother, he finds the real world and the fantasy world begin to blend. That is when bad things start to happen. That is when the Crooked Man comes. And David is violently propelled into a land populated by heroes, wolves and monsters, and his quest to find the legendary Book of Lost Things.

Reason for reading

I’ve never heard of John Connolly before; the reason I bought this book was purely down to its cover - yep I’ll admit it, I’m one of *those* people - the ones who do judge a book by its cover! I was browsing the book shelves at the store and the cover caught my eye so I added it to my basket - simple as that.

First line

“Once upon a time - for that is how all stories should begin - there was a boy who lost his mother.”

Review

Let me start by saying - I loved this book - it is by far the best story I have read for quite some time; if I didn’t have so many other books to read I could well have started back at the beginning as soon as I’d finished it!

The tale revolves around David - a 12 year old boy who loses his much-loved mother and finds himself living in a strange house with his father’s new wife, and his half-brother Georgie. David feels pushed out by these new additions in his father’s life and is haunted by the voice of his mother. One night he follows her voice and finds himself in a strange land where he is chased by wolves and a strange Crooked Man as he sets out on a journey to meet a King who can apparently send him home.

The story has a Narnia feel to it - though David enters through an old crumbled wall instead of the back of a wardrobe. As he encounters different characters on his journey he is surrounded by traditional fairy tales with a not so traditional twist. He discovers that it wasn’t Little Red Riding Hood who was attacked by a wolf, but rather she seduced the wolf and created a new breed of wolf-men who wish to take over this land.

My favourite - and by far the funniest spin - is that it wasn’t the wicked step-mother who poisoned Snow White with an apple, but the seven dwarves who were fed up with her eating them out of house and home! I laughed out loud at the dwarves description of the event:

“We lay her [Snow White] out on a slab, surround her with flowers and little weeping bunny rabbits, you know, all the trimmings, then along comes a bloody prince and kisses her. We don’t even have a prince round here. He just appeared out of nowhere on a bleeding white horse. Next thing you know he’s climbed off and he’s onto Snow White like a whippet down a rabbit hole. Don’t know what he thought he was doing, gadding about randomly kissing strange women who happened to be sleeping at the time.”

David meets some great characters along the way in the form of a Woodsman and a soldier named Roland, both of whom help him to discover an inner strength he didn’t know he had. As he takes on the challenges thrown at him David also begins to realise how much he misses home, and becomes protective of his baby brother.

Without giving too much of the plot away I think that David’s visit to this strange land is as a result of a near-death experience, and that the characters and tales are dreamt up by his sub-conscious as a way of helping him come to terms with the loss of his mother and to understand the resulting changes in his life.

It really is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it to all of you.

Your thoughts

Have you read The Book of Lost Things? What did you think of the novel? What was your favourite fairy tale? Post your comments in the box below - I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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