The Land of Lost Things: the Top Ten Bestseller and highly anticipated follow up to The Book of Lost Things

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Full Review: So this book was so good. I loved the first book in the series and thought that Connolly ended it perfectly. I was a little hesitant to see he was revising this series since I thought it wouldn't work as well. But Connolly does a great job with the character of Ceres and her daughter Phoebe. The whole book shows how Connolly still loves connections to myths and legends. This story is a dark fairy tale still threaded with hope. Here is my story: I had a daughter once, but she was stolen from me, and left in her place was a doll in her image.

A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism. A: Ceres brings to Elsewhere her feelings about, and experiences of, her own world, just as David does in The Book of Lost Things. She sees a Russian tank, because the war in Ukraine is ongoing in her world, but she’s also very conscious of environmental issues, since this is the world that she may have to bequeath to her daughter, and she’d prefer if it was not completely despoiled. The novel doesn’t preach—at least, I hope it doesn’t, or not too much—but it’s hard to live in the world and not be worried about its future, especially as a parent.Final rating: a resounding five stars. If you love dark yet heartwarming fantasy tales, definitely give this one a read (but perhaps read The Book of Lost Things first if you haven't already). Yet over those years, I found myself returning to the world of The Book of Lost Things—attracted, I suppose, not only by the strangeness of it but also by my personal connection to the narrative. I drew very much on my own life to create the character of David: his attic room filled with books was similar to my attic room as a boy; his experience of OCD and therapy was mine, and something of his experience of the loss of a parent was mine, too. All my books are personal to me—I wouldn’t wish to write them otherwise—but this was perhaps especially the case with The Book of Lost Things.

Even if you haven’t read The Book of Lost Things (which you totally should, by the way), this book offers so much excitement and adventure that anyone can enjoy it. The writing style is just beautiful. Connolly has a way of making even tragedy and sorrow sound beautiful. I most definitely didn’t want the story to end, and was sad once I had finished. The Land of Lost Things will certainly be getting many rereads from me for years to come.

Twice upon a time—for that is how some stories should continue—there was a mother whose daughter was stolen from her. Oh, she could still see the girl. She could touch her skin and brush her hair. She could watch the slow rise and fall of her chest, and if she placed her hand upon the child’s breast, she could feel the beating of her heart. But the child was silent, and her eyes remained closed. Tubes helped her to breathe, and tubes kept her fed, but for the mother it was as though the essence of the one she loved was elsewhere, and the figure in the bed was a shell, a mannequin, waiting for a disembodied soul to return and animate it. In 2006, Irish author John Connolly brought us a brilliant bit of dark fantasy entitled THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS. It was quite a departure from his decades-long recurring series featuring Charlie Parker, a crime-thriller saga tinged with just the right amount of supernatural influence. THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS was the type of story that could appeal to both adults and children and called to mind the work of master’s like C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll.

A whole new vocabulary had presented itself to Ceres, an alien way of interpreting a person’s continuance in the world: cerebral edema, axonal injury, and most important of all, to mother and child, the Glasgow Coma Scale, the metric by which Phoebe’s consciousness—and, by extension, possibly her right to life—was now determined. Score less than five across eye, verbal, and motor responses, and the chances of death or existing in a persistent vegetative state were 80 percent. Score more than eleven, and the chances of recovery were estimated at 90 percent. Hover, like Phoebe, between those two figures and, well… In the last chapter, “Wyrd-Writere” or “One Who Writes an Account of Events,” Ceres writes, “Twice upon a time—for that is how some stories should continue—there was a mother whose daughter was stolen from her—”. What do you think of the novel’s loop structure?Phoebe’s fate remains uncertain at the end of the novel. Does she live or die? Discuss: In either case, what might the future hold for both Ceres and Phoebe? I find I spend a lot of time worrying about my sons—Are they safe and well? Are they happy?—but more particularly my mother. She’s frailer, and has endured some falls, although she remains very sharp mentally and continues to live independently not far from my home. I keep my phone close to me when I go to sleep in case something happens to her—to any of them. No good comes from a call in the dead of night, but as we grow older, the likelihood of receiving one becomes greater. As a child psychiatrist once told my parents—indeed, as the psychiatrist in The Book of Lost Things tells David’s father—I may be a bit of a worrier by nature, but I’ve also reached that stage in life where I have cause to worry. I have adult responsibilities, and people to take care of. It would be more unusual if I didn’t worry, I think. It would be a sure sign that there was something wrong with me. A: Perhaps Ceres, because of what I said earlier. Sometimes, when we’re young, or when we’re angry with our parents, we don’t realize just how much of their time is spent being concerned about us and how much they miss us when we’re not around. Because Ceres’s daughter is unresponsive, Ceres is in a situation where she can see and touch her daughter, but can’t communicate with her. Phoebe is both present and absent, and the strain takes a terrible toll on her mother. Now, he has finally followed up that stand-alone novel with THE LAND OF LOST THINGS. It is a return to the land that brought those terrific fables and stories that inhabited the book of the same name. Ceres, which is the same name as the Roman Goddess of Agriculture, reads to her comatose daughter Phoebe from The Book Of Lost Things at the bedside of her hospital room. The only alarming thing is that the first two stories Ceres recites came from her own mind without her needing to look at all at the book.

But I also feel that Calio may be one of the most interesting characters in the book. They’re so embittered, so alone, but as we come to realize, they’re a kind of storehouse of memories and identities, the last of their kind. I can understand why Calio is the way they are. Ceres doesn’t realize that she is days away from entering a different reality, one her father would have recognized, populated by beings not primarily human. There she will experience her own tale all the while worrying about her daughter and remembering all she was taught by her father. The book is very personal to Connolly and reflects his current life stage which, he says, is shot through with the normal, middle-aged anxieties about adult children and ageing parents: Our new protagonist is Ceres, a mother who maintains a vigil beside her daughter’s beside after a car accident has left her comatose. As such, the new fable is an inverse of what came before – this time a parent is grieving the loss of a child. A creepy old house on the hospital grounds has been abandoned by the author who lived there, David, who in this reality is the author of The Book of Lost Things . Inevitably, Ceres is drawn in and thus embarks on a mission to save her daughter. So thank you for taking the time to read this book, whatever age you are or feel. I’m glad we got to walk together for a while.To me this book was akin to fertilizing my soul. It reflected the grief and tragedy that touches all of our lives at one point or another; yet it also reflected the hope that is intrinsic to many, but that others struggle to find. The will to carry on through dire circumstances. The knowledge that some people do care, in spite of the ugliness we all see on the news every day. And finally, it reflected my love of reading and language and it comforted me to know there are still others out there just like me. But there is an old house, near the hospital grounds that once belonged to a missing author. Something wants Ceres to enter the home and into the memories of Ceres's childhood days. She is drawn into the folklore which her father loved, to a land with magical and interesting beings.