Customer Reviews

How To Be Lost

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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!

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.

Reading this book was an engrossing and painful experience. I am the mother of four girls, one named Ellie. I loved the characters and the mystery, but, in the end, I had to read through the night to discover the resolution of the plot. I cared so much about this family!! It is good writing, a gripping story, and an absorbing emotional experience.

Thank God for How to Be Lost, by Amanda Eyre Ward. I've just spent a too-long jag of trying to remember why, exactly, I liked reading novels, when along came this one, and though I had my questions and doubts in the first couple and a half chapters, the plot lines did a nice double-back, and my assumptions shattered. I did find myself, after having spent two thirds of the novel in New Orleans and New York, wishing that we'd spent the majority of our time in Missoula (where the final third or so resides, and where the prose is sharpest, leanest, most enviable), but frankly I like it a bit loose, where I can't really pin down either plot or style or anything else, for that matter. The novel that sets out for uniformity of voice ends up with just that, and I tend to find that tiresome. This? This is good. It picks me up when it needs to and drops me from the top of the stairs when it needs to do that. Reading How to Be Lost was a bit like drinking a cold bottle of water in one long pull. It's cleansing. And it makes me feel like a reader again. And, not-too-incidentally, a writer as well. And finally, thankful, for having read it.

If you were troubled by "At the deep end of the ocean," then "How to be lost" will make you smile. I won't say how. Yes, I will. Take two pencils, one in each hand with a large sheet of paper under them. Set them on the paper and move them around, especially the one in your right hand--up and down and around. The left hand just kind of stays there until you arc it to the left then sweep all the way across and let it meet with the pencil in your right hand. There, that's it--that's how the two main characters meet at the end. Does that make sense? Not a lot? OK, let's start over.

When she was fifteen, Caroline Winters lost her five year old sister. She disappeared and is never found. The already dysfunctional family falls completely apart. Fifteen years later, Caroline is still lost. Yes, Caroline. Everyone becomes stuck in the past when Ellie disappears. Mother Isabella, and middle sister Madeline. Father drinks himself to death.

Then one day Isabella shows Caroline a picture in a magazine. It's Ellie, they both are convinced. Caroline leaves her home in New Orleans and heads to Montana to find her. That's where the photograph is taken.

Meanwhile, Amanda Eyre Ward, the author, uses a literary technique similar to something out of Faulkner by switching narrative voice to Agnes Fowler, a librarian in Montana, who finds a match in Johan from Alaskahunks.com, a singles service. She begins a correspondence with him to which the reader is privy.

Back and forth from Agnes to Caroline, then sometimes Ms Ward tells the story of Isabella. Faulkner kept up with this switching back and forth by keeping a paper chart tacked to his wall. Ward uses index cards with plot snippets and lays them out as it pleases her.

"How to get lost" is a wonderful book to find yourself with on vacation --it is the perfect vacation read. One concept Ward uses in this story is having the reader part of the story. How so? The intertwining of the three stories demands the reader's participation. Ask: Who is Agnes and why is she part of this story? Why does Ellie disappear? And the ending! What does the ending mean? Now there's a real demand of your imagination.

Are you up for it? Yes, you will be glad. It's an excellent story!

The Winters sisters lived in a million-dollar house in the suburbs of New York City when they were growing up. Their father, a Wall Street businessman, was an alcoholic, drowning alone each evening in his den. Their mother, ex-model Isabelle, was beautiful but largely co-dependent. With dysfunctional parents, the three girls learned to depend on each other. At night, they would gather in one bed and whisper about the day they'd run away to New Orleans.

But then, on the morning they planned their great escape, the youngest sister, 5-year-old Ellie, disappeared. The loss tore the parents apart: Mr. Winters retreated farther into his Scotch and soon died of cirrhosis, and Isabelle retreated farther into herself. The older girls, Caroline and Madeline, grew farther and farther apart.

Flash-forward 15 years. There's still no sign of Ellie, and Madeline and Caroline only see each other at Christmas. Madeline is an "upper East Side wife," living in NYC with her investment banker husband and expecting her first child. And Caroline, the narrator of HOW TO BE LOST, did indeed move to New Orleans, and she now works at a tourist bar as a cocktail waitress. Thoughts of Ellie still nag at her; unlike Madeline, who seeks closure, Caroline cannot accept the thought that Ellie may be dead. When she sees a photo in People magazine that was taken in Montana of a young woman who looks alarmingly like Ellie, Caroline decides to head to Missoula and seek out her sister. What she doesn't realize is that the trip she's taking really isn't to find Ellie at all; it's a journey to find Madeline, the sister who never got lost, and to discover who she herself is.

I read HOW TO BE LOST in a couple of hours. It's a little book, but rarely can I remember reading a book of any size that had as much heart as this little gem of a novel does. Told in a series of first-person narratives, letters, and flashbacks, HOW TO BE LOST is a quick, engaging, and charming read. The layers of the story are revealed expertly; the characters are revealed just as deftly. Caroline's voice is intelligent and sharply observant, perceptive and surprising. The novel is beautifully written in simple, spare prose, and it is emotionally stirring. The novel's "mystery" reaches a surprising conclusion, and the resolution of the novel is simply lovely. HOW TO BE LOST is the story of one family, ravaged by grief and loss: It's the story of two sisters slowly growing back together again. Just read the first page and try not to read on. Try this little book right away--you'll love it!

This is a read in one sitting kind of book. I loved how the story unfolded and how what seemed to be different storylines tied together. I also liked the different settings of New Orleans, suburban New York, and Montana. The characters were compelling and there were surprising twists in the plot.

by Joni M. Wallace, author of Redshift.

I anxiously awaited Amanda Eyre Ward's second novel afer reading the award-winning Sleep Toward Heaven. How To Be Lost does not disappoint. Ward's lucid prose, and her story, illuminate our most interior landscapes - grief, longing, and ultimately, how we are found. Ward's is an enormously talented voice - funny, unblinking, and sage. She will make you laugh as surely as she will break your heart. How To Be Lost is a memorable accomplishment.

I started reading How to Be Lost and three hours later I found myself reading the last page! I loved this book. I felt a personal connection to the characters and cared desparately about their plight. As always, Ward's sense of humor shines through in this fantastic novel. This should be the next book you read!