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What Was Lost | 
 enlarge | Author: Catherine O'flynn
Publisher: Tindal Street Press
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £2.99
You Save: £6.00 (67%)
New (30) Used (9) from £2.50
Rating:  67 reviews
Sales Rank: 322
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0955138418
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780955138416
ASIN: 0955138418
Publication Date: January 4, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Unwanted gift - unread.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 62 more reviews...
 "It was going to be a truly hellish day at Your Music" July 13, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Hmmm. This would smell of "first novel" to me even if this wasn't advertised all over the front cover. How can I tell? you ask wide eyed. Perhaps it's the heavy reliance on personal experience (the sweet shop, the early eighties primary school, the shopping centre), perhaps it's the switch from one writing style to another to showcase that the author has Technique, perhaps it's the heavy editing which always, always shows, just like the alterations on a cheap suit, perhaps it's the use of the ghost story, a standard support for flimsy plots and a favourite of the aspiring scribbler, because so many of us got hooked on reading through that particular genre.
Having said all that, it's a decent enough, if wildly overpraised first attempt. A lonely young girl, whose diaries we read at the beginning of the book, fantasises about being a private eye and spends time at the recently constructed local shopping centre pretending to solve crime. One day, she disappears. Twenty years later, her disappearance is still unsolved, but her image appears on the CCTV of the same shopping centre, pulling a security guard and a shop assistant into reinvestigating what really happened years ago. There are a couple of fairly predictable plot twists and that's about it.
Thematically, O'Flynn is going for a critique of consumer culture, the point so brilliantly captured by the zombies staggering around the mall in Romero's "Dawn of the Dead". Shopping makes ghosts of us all. The trouble is that the fate of the girl and the journey of the characters has no relationship to that theme, so the exercise becomes as empty as the night time corridors of the Green Oaks Centre and left me with the unsatisfied feeling a whole day shopping for things I don't really need gives me.
 Dissapointing July 2, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Having read so many good reviews I looked forward to reading this book. It started off well, but introduced characters I did not care about, and I actually could not finish the book, try as I might. I find it hard to understand what most of the other readers got so excited about. Perhaps it appeals to youngsters who spend their lives in shopping malls. I couldn't relate to the book at all.
What was lost..... July 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Only when you get to the end and all is revealed do you realise how good of a book this is. The main character, a young girl named Kate Meaney is so, so likeable. She almost becomes your new best friend. Never in a book have I become so attached to a character. The story is also excellent, especially how all the characters are linked through this special little girl. I would have given this book 5 stars if it wasn't for the dullness of the other two main characters, Kurt & Lisa. You cannot help but be bored with these pitiful characters who have no likeability factor.
Great book though, highly recommended!!
 Fantastic Read July 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I read loads of books and constantly trawl the Amazon website for reviews. This is the first time I have felt compelled to add my tuppence worth on a novel. I read this book in three days and I just think it is a fantastic piece of writing - haunting, funny, poignant. It made me laugh out loud in places. Having just finished it I feel a sense of loss for the characters who in that short space of time have made such an impression on me. Even (or especially) Mickey the stuffed monkey will stay with me. He's the silent star of the book! My normal commuter reading fare is a learned classic or biography - I thought this would be light relief. It's not. The characters and setting are every bit as vivid and thoughtful as anything you will find in so-called heavy-weight novels.
Unputdownable - a detective novel with a twist June 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Immediately engaging, intriguing and ultimately an interesting, thought-provoking read. Don't let the easy narrative style fool you: this is no teenage detective novel - it is a subtle exploration of escape, hardship, loss and the intertwining of individuals' lives - seemingly fleeting contacts having lasting consequences and different stories and interpretations of what is lost within families, schools and communities.
I loved this book. Virtually read it non-stop, in a single day. Unputdownable. Amusing in parts. Illuminating in places (I for one have never wandered the back corridors of my local shopping mall) and with a commentary on social and political change in Britain in the 1980s. Highly recommended.
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