Book 64: "The Book of Lost Things" by John Connolly
Friday, August 24th, 2007 20:11![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeI picked this up with the intention of reading a few pages to see what it was like before ditching it, as I thought that it would be too young adulty for my tastes. However, I was up to page 56 before I knew it and hooked by the tale of a boy whose mother dies after a long painful illness, and who bitterly resents the stepmother and baby half-brother who came into his life rather too soon after his mother's death.
The real world setting is the Home Counties early in the Second World War, with bombers flying overhead and David's father working at the top-secret decoding centre at Bletchley Park, and it is a crashing aeroplane that precipitates David into another world. Can a journey through a land populated with characters from fairy tales, help David come to terms with the changes in his life?
I was surprised to find the story coming to an end when there were still 150 or so pages left, but enjoyed reading the author's thoughts about his novel and the fairy tale land that David enters. He discusses each of the fairy tales that are referred to during the book, and how their themes relate to David's journey and the articles includes a classic version of each tale (two versions in the case of Beauty and the Beast) plus Browning's poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.
The real world setting is the Home Counties early in the Second World War, with bombers flying overhead and David's father working at the top-secret decoding centre at Bletchley Park, and it is a crashing aeroplane that precipitates David into another world. Can a journey through a land populated with characters from fairy tales, help David come to terms with the changes in his life?
I was surprised to find the story coming to an end when there were still 150 or so pages left, but enjoyed reading the author's thoughts about his novel and the fairy tale land that David enters. He discusses each of the fairy tales that are referred to during the book, and how their themes relate to David's journey and the articles includes a classic version of each tale (two versions in the case of Beauty and the Beast) plus Browning's poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.
