Title: Lost & Found
Author: Brooke Davis
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 2.00
Pub Date: June 24, 2014

T H R E E • W O R D S

Quick • Absurd • Reflective

📖 S Y N O P S I S

Millie Bird, seven years old and ever hopeful, always wears red gumboots to match her curly hair. Her struggling mother, grieving the death of Millie’s father, leaves her in the big ladies’ underwear department of a local store and never returns.

Agatha Pantha, eighty-two, hasn't left her house—or spoken to another human being—since she was widowed seven years ago. She fills the silences by yelling at passersby, watching loud static on the TV, and maintaining a strict daily schedule.

Karl the Touch Typist, eighty-seven, once used his fingers to type out love notes on his wife’s skin. Now that she’s gone, he types his words out into the air as he speaks. Karl’s been committed to a nursing home, but in a moment of clarity and joy, he escapes. Now he’s on the lam.

Brought together in strange circumstances, the three will embark upon a road trip across Western Australia to find Millie’s mum. Along the way, Karl wants to find out how to be a man again, and Agatha just wants everything to go back to how it was. Together, they will discover that old age is not the same as death, that the young can be wise, and that letting yourself feel sad once in a while just might be the key to a happy life.

💭 T H O U G H T S

My expectations were incredibly high going into Lost & Found given the comparisons to A Man Called Ove (one of my all-time favourite books). And it had so many components I love in books (young main character, quirky older characters, and open discussion of grief and death), yet it came up short on so many levels.

I will start out by saying that I absolutely adored Millie. Her fascination with death intrigued me. And while some readers may find this aspect extremely morbid and uncomfortable, for me I think it's important to allow children to explore the realities of grief and death when they occur, and not shelter them from it. Millie is basically the only reason I managed to make it to the end, although I did appreciate how this book celebrates what Western society views as the negative emotions (sadness in particular).

In all honesty, the plot didn't keep my focus, to the point where so many times I found my mind wandering. It could be the fact that it felt very amateurish and over-the-top, which kept me from really connecting. The two older characters seemed entirely unbelievable. And some of the stylistic choices utilized throughout the text just didn't work for me. It's quite possible that I didn't get some of the dark humour or cultural terms as well.

Lost & Found was quick and quirky, offering several reflective tidbits on grief, but at the end of the day it was difficult to take seriously and highly forgettable. If you're looking for Ove this definitely isn't it.

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• readers who enjoy dark humour

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"A fact about the world Millie knows for sure: Everyone knows everything about being born, and no one knows anything about being dead."

"Life decides what happens, not you."