Lost
A Novel
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3.0 • 21 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“A brilliant, perceptive, and deeply moving fable.”
—Boston Sunday Globe
Publishers Weekly calls Gregory Maguire’s Lost “a deftly written, compulsively readable modern-day ghost story.” Brilliantly weaving together the literary threads of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and the Jack the Ripper stories, the bestselling author of The Wicked Years canon creates a captivating fairy tale for the modern world. With Lost, Maguire—who re-imagined a darker, more dangerous Oz, and inspired the creation of the Tony Award-winning Broadway blockbuster Wicked—delivers a haunting tale of shadows and phantoms and things going bump in the night, confirming his reputation as “one of contemporary fiction’s most assured myth-makers” (Kirkus Reviews).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Before he broke onto the adult bestseller lists with his irreverent interpretations of the Cinderella story (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister) and the Wizard of Oz (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West), Maguire wrote children's books with titles like Six Haunted Hairdos, Seven Spiders Spinning and Four Stupid Cupids. His latest is a virtual literary paella of adult and children's fantasies: Jack the Ripper, A Christmas Carol, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Exorcist even a wafting glimpse of Dracula. The result is a deftly written, compulsively readable modern-day ghost story that easily elicits suspension of disbelief. American writer Winifred Rudge, whose mass market book about astrology has been far more successful than her fiction, is in London to research a novel linking Jack the Ripper to the house in Hampstead where her own great-great-grandfather rumored to be the model for Ebenezer Scrooge lived. But as Winifred discovers, there is no evidence that the Ripper ever visited Hampstead, let alone buried one of his victims inside the chimney of a house there, and his presence in the story is a red herring. Much more interesting is the mysterious disappearance of Winnie's cousin, John Comestor, the latest resident of the family house. Moreover, something is making an infernal racket inside the chimney, and soon there are other bizarre manifestations of some unseen force. A Dickensian assortment of neighbors (one dotty lady is called Mrs. Maddingly) variously obfuscate and hint at strange events. Maguire's prose is both jaunty and scary; he knows how to mix spooky ingredients with contemporary situations. By the time a spirit called Gervasa begins to speak through Winnie, readers will be hooked.
Customer Reviews
Slow to start, but then...
This book was slow at the beginning or didn't seem like it was going to lead to anything. But it finally got interesting about half way through. Generally I don't have the patience for something so slow, but I like the author and I had alot of sleepless nights when I was 9 months pregnant. So I should say I was pleasantly surprised and glad I stuck with it.
Ugh. So boring.
I have been trying so hard to become a real fan of Maguire’s. I loved the book Wicked so deeply. The incredible creativity required in order to take a deeply two-dimensional character written by another author a hundred years prior — and to do this so skillfully was a revelation to me and I imagine many others
It seems as though what Mr. Maguire believed is that we all adored his prose, his syntax, his turn of a phrase. He’s not terrible at those things — he does know how to weave a lot of detail into a story — but he’s no Hemingway. I’m not either, so its not my place to expect that I have some position from which I get to decide whether or not he’s published as an author, or if he must abdicate the seat where The Writer Who Thoroughly Reimagines 2-Dimensional Characters Conceived By Others” sits or something.
But a similar thing occurs sometimes just after we’ve started dating someone new. At first they seem great and we love every moment of the first couple of weeks. But then after enough time together I realize that if I have to listen to this person describe one. more. item. that I am going to need to jab my eardrums out with an ice pick. The fact that he wrote so much of his canon about my family and my family’s history before here makes it even harder for me to ditch all of this.
Gregory Maguire I am hereby breaking up with you. I wish you and all those readers who think I’m crazy the best of luck. There are some readers out there who are a perfect fit for you. I’m just not one of them.
Love,
RDN Zhnư͘th Son of La’aph-Nalsç (He Who Does Nought End), Issue of Bư͘೧ r’r The Brave
Love
I love this book. I have read all 4 of his oz books, the Cinderella one, the snow white one and by far this was my fave. It wasn't nearly as slow starting as all the others, and let's be honest it takes Mr. Maguire a while to get into it and you just have to suffer through...this book was a great modern piece full of crazy people, possessed animals, supposed ghosts, and a stubborn broken heart all wrapped up in miserable yet somewhat romantic English weather. In fact reminiscing over this read makes me want to pick it up again...