What Was Lost
Winner of the Costa First Novel Award
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- €4.99
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- €4.99
Publisher Description
CHOSEN BY GAIL HONEYMAN ON BBC RADIO 4 A GOOD READ
'Sad, funny and full of charm - a delight' Gail Honeyman, author of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE AND THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD
A lost little girl with her notebook and toy monkey appears on the CCTV screens of the Green Oaks shopping centre, evoking memories of junior detective Kate Meaney, missing for 20 years.
Kurt, a security guard with a sleep disorder, and Lisa, a disenchanted deputy manager at Your Music, follow her through the centre's endless corridors - welcome relief from the tedium of their lives.
But as this after-hours friendship grows in intensity, it brings new loss and new longing to light.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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. Fast 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 book is both a chilling mystery and a poignant examination of the effects of loss and loneliness.
