Books: The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly (Intro)

I recently finished this book that I had been simul-reading with The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, and I need each and every one of you to get your hands on a copy and read it immediately: The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly.

Amazon describes it as such:

"High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother. He is angry and alone, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in his imagination, he finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a land that is a strange reflection of his own world, populated by heroes and monsters, and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book... The Book of Lost Things."

When I started reading this book, I was immediately devastated and immediately hooked.

"Once upon a time—for that is how all stories should begin—there was a boy who lost his mother. He had, in truth, been losing her for a very long time" (Connolly 1).

If this isn't a gut punch of an opening, I don't know what is. It grabbed me by the heart and squeezed, refusing to let me go. This is a story that could not be ignored or set aside.

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From https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html
© 2019 thepunctuationguide.com

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From https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html
© 2019 thepunctuationguide.com

The protagonist is 12-year-old David, and his mother is dying of some unnamed illness.

"Before she became ill, David's mother would often tell him that stories were alive. They weren't alive in the way that people were alive, or even dogs or cats. People were alive whether you chose to notice them or not, while dogs tended to make you notice them if they decided that you weren't paying them enough attention. Cats, meanwhile, were very good at pretending people didn't exist at all when it suited them" (Connolly 3).

Okay. Excellent description of people, dogs, and cats. But stories... I am intrigued.

"Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling.[. . .] Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination, and transform the reader. Stories wanted to be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life" (Connolly 3).

Three pages in, and already I feel that this book isn't just a book. It is already coming to life in my hands, in my mind. It is grasping at my soul, and I am simultaneously losing myself in the ink on the pages while finding my secret truth buried in between the lines.

This was recommended to me by one of my favorite people, and I swear that she recommended it because she knew I needed this book. It fits perfectly into the types of fiction that I prefer, bordering somewhere between science fiction and fantasy, straddling the line of a dark fairy tale that brings adults back to their days of reading YA fiction. There are stories that we read that keep reality crystal clear right in front of us. Personally, I prefer to read stories that pull reality just beyond the reach of my fingertips, tugging at the veil of my imagination. It is in these stories that I am able to escape, and what is the point of reading fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, if you can't escape into worlds unknown and unexplored?

I have a few more things to say about this, but right now, I want you to order this book, request it from the library, download it to your Kindle, whatever. Get your hands on this book!