How to Be Lost: A Novel [Paperback]

Amanda Eyre Ward (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 30, 2005

Joseph and Isabelle Winters seem to have it all: a grand home in Holt, New York, a trio of radiant daughters, and a sense that they are safe in their affluent corner of America. But when five-year-old Ellie disappears, the fault lines within the family are exposed: Joseph, once a successful businessman, succumbs to his demons; Isabelle retreats into memories of her debutante days in Savannah; and Ellie s bereft sisters grow apart Madeline reluctantly stays home, while Caroline runs away.

Fifteen years later, Caroline, now a New Orleans cocktail waitress, sees a photograph of a woman in a magazine. Convinced that it is Ellie all grown up, Caroline embarks on a search for her missing sister. Armed with copies of the photo, an amateur detective guide, and a cooler of Dixie beer, Caroline travels through the New Mexico desert, the mountains of Colorado, and the smoky underworld of Montana, determined to salvage her broken family.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Sometimes an off-key phrase in a soulful song can wrench at the heart, nay, the soul and send one off into that same far-away place that a great book can take you to. Amanda Eyre Ward's second novel, How to Be Lost, provides for the reader with a finely-tuned ear, a nicely wrought, syncopated, octave-changing story. Featuring a hard-living, almost down-on-her-luck narrator, How to Be Lost isn't lost at all when it comes to telling a literary mystery wrapped in the arms of a strong woman's tale. Ward's story bounces between New Orleans and New York, taking her protagonist, Caroline, into steely encounters with her somewhat-estranged family, especially her older sister and mother, as they continue, many years after the fact, to deal with the wrenching effects of the unresolved disappearance of Ellie, the youngest of the Winters family. Readers may find uncanny similarities between the eerie tone and dark nature of Deborah Schupack's The Boy on the Bus but won't be disappointed at all with the story that unfolds and the clever, darkly humorous nature of Ward's pitch-perfect voice. --E. Brooke Gilbert --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Fifteen years ago, on the day the three Winters sisters packed their most precious belongings in their mother's Oldsmobile and planned to run away from home just as soon as school was out, 5-year-old Ellie disappeared. The family never recovered: their abusive father drank himself to death; their unstable mother retreated deeper into her depression; and once-close sisters Caroline and Madeline grew far apart. Now, armed with a grainy People magazine photo of a young woman who might be a 20-year-old version of her beloved youngest sister, Caroline heads out for Montana on a quest to bring her back home. What Caroline, burdened by years of guilt, doubt, and regret, discovers along the way has as much to do with finding herself as it does with tracking down Ellie. Ward's smart, sharp second novel is a read-in-one-sitting treat, a delightfully satisfying blend of hip humor and poignant longing, and an unsentimental yet inspiring testimony to the power of hope over reason and love over loss. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (August 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345483170
• ISBN-13: 978-0345483171
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.8 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (106 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #641,362 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ABOUT AMANDA
Amanda Eyre Ward was born in New York City in 1972. Her family moved to Rye, New York when she was four. Amanda attended Kent School in Kent, CT, where she wrote for the Kent News.

Amanda majored in English and American Studies at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She studied fiction writing with Jim Shepard and spent her junior fall in coastal Kenya. She worked part-time at the Williamstown Public Library. After graduation, Amanda taught at Athens College in Greece for a year, and then moved to Missoula, Montana.

Amanda studied fiction writing at the University of Montana with Bill Kittredge, Dierdre McNamer, Debra Earling, and Kevin Canty, receiving her MFA. After traveling to Egypt, she took a job at the University of Montana Mansfield Library, working in Inter Library Loan.

In 1998, Amanda moved to Austin, Texas where she began working on Sleep Toward Heaven. She wrote for the Austin Chronicle and worked for a variety of Internet startups. In 1999, Amanda won third prize in the Austin Chronicle short story contest with her story Miss Montana's Wedding Day.

She published Butte as in Beautiful that same year.

In July, 2000, Amanda married the geologist Tip Meckel in Ouray, Colorado.

They spent a summer in New Orleans, Louisiana, where Amanda wrote the short stories The Beginning of the Wrong Novel and Classified.

During that summer, Amanda finished Sleep Toward Heaven, which was published in 2003. Sleep Toward Heaven won the Violet Crown Book Award and was optioned for film by Sandra Bullock and Fox Searchlight. To promote Sleep Toward Heaven, Amanda, her baby, and her mother Mary-Anne Westley traveled to London and Paris.

Amanda moved to Waterville, Maine, where she wrote in an attic filled with books. Amanda's second novel, How to Be Lost, was published in 2004. How to Be Lost was selected as a Target Bookmarked pick, and has been published in fifteen countries.

After one year in Maine and two years on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Amanda and her family returned to Austin, Texas.

To research her third novel, Forgive Me, Amanda traveled with her sister, Liza Ward Bennigson, to Cape Town, South Africa. Forgive Me was published in 2007.

Amanda's short story collection, Love Stories in This Town, was published in April, 2009.

Her new novel, Close Your Eyes, will be published in July, 2011.

Amanda currently writes every morning and spends afternoons with her two young boys.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 77 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The geography of loss October 4, 2004

By Luan Gaines HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

There are many ways to be lost, even when a life is clearly defined by family and responsibilities. In her new novel, Ward tackles the kind of loss that tears a hole in the family fabric, even an already broken family, leaving it open and fragmented.

The two older sisters, Caroline and Madeline, are protective of their younger sibling, Ellie, knowing instinctively that their home is in trouble, their father disappearing farther each day into an ocean of alcohol, where he floats alone. An inept, if beautiful, mother is inadequate, unable to curtail her husband's drinking, but too self-obsessed to see what is happening to her girls.

For their part, the girls create their own private alliance, secretly planning to run away to New Orleans. When Ellie suddenly disappears, the family is caught in a time warp none of them can escape, blindsided by sudden catastrophe. From an upper-class New York neighborhood to New Orleans bars to the dank world of nighttime Missoula, Montana, the Winters family searches for identity in all the wrong places, hoping to fill in that empty place where once a happy child lived. But nothing they do geographically can heal the emotional damage of that loss.

Caroline and Madeline drift apart, Caroline to New Orleans, where she drinks hardily, avoiding commitment and life choices, Madeline to marriage and life in the city. Their still beautiful mother never recovers from the loss of her youngest daughter, searching endlessly for leads. When Isabel is killed in an accident, Caroline and Madeline are confronted with their own harsh realities and the need for closure.

This is a story about being lost and being found, sometimes without ever leaving home. Beautifully executed, the novel builds precisely to its denouement, a place where choice is inevitable and the past must be put to rest in service of the future. The prose is compelling, the characters as real as my own eccentric family and their dilemmas as familiar as any facing those who encounter tragedy, but must move on. Time is irrevocable but forgiveness is not. There is always a way home. Luan Gaines/2004.

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Winner From Amanda Ward September 28, 2004

By Sarah Rocklin

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I loved Ward's first book so much, I wondered if her second would be the victim the dreaded sophomore slump. But no worries...Ward gives us another moving tale, beautifully written.

This book, like her first, gives us several threads to follow, and one of Ward's gift is her ability to take those threads and weave them into a solid whole without any sense of manipulation. Caroline, Maddy and Ellie are such compelling characters and the love and tensions between sisters are drawn so well.

Can't wait for Ward's third!

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book October 29, 2005

By Cathe Fein Olson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

The story focuses on oldest sister Caroline, a lonely cocktail waitress in New Orleans - afraid to get close to anyone and still feeling guilty about the disappearance of her youngest sister, Ellie. Meanwhile, back in NY her mother and sister Maddy are still trying to deal with the youngest sister's disappearance in their own ways. Since the sister had never been found, the family cannot find closure. Then the mother sees a picture in a magazine that looks like the missing Ellie and wants Caroline to search for her.

This is one of those books just makes you want to read on forever. I enjoyed it from the very first page - the wonderful writing, the disfunctional characters who were just as lost as the missing sister, the plot and the way the story unfolded.

I will definitely be reading this author's other book.