Customer Reviews

Little (Grrl) Lost

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been reading Charles de Lint novels and short stories for nearly as long as he's been writing them. And in that time I've recommended various books to people of a variety of ages. However, as fun as his books can be, not nearly enough of them were appropriate for younger readers.

I was very excited to see this title added to his small, but growing list of books geared towards younger readers. I think that this book is the first that would be appropriate for upper middle school readers.

Some of the complaints of one of the other reviewers are, to me, some of the strengths of this book for a younger audience. The narration stays fairly tightly focused on the two main characters: TJ & Elizabeth. The secondary characters are developed based on the amount of interaction TJ and Elizabeth have with them. And while both girls do change to varying degrees within the short time period of the book, the changes do not seem entirely implausible if you consider all that happens in that time.

This is a fine tale of how friends can change your life and yourself when you let them. And it is a fun entry into the rather large fantasy world of Charles de Lint.

"Little (Grrl) Lost" is Charles De Lint's latest novel set in the fictitious city of Newford, the setting for much of De Lint's work that helped to establish the urban fantasy genre. "The Blue Girl" from 2006 is another novel set in Newford (Cliff note plot to that book: Punky teen Imogen wants to start fresh, and mistake-free, when her family moves to Newford. She makes friends with Maxine, straight-laced girl with an overprotective mother. As time passes the girls observe strange happenings at their school and wind up matching wits with some very mean fairies among other things.)

The story in "Little (Grrl) Lost" is refreshingly straightforward for a fantasy: Fourteen-year-old T.J. is furious when her family has to leave their farm and move to Newford. To makes matter worse, T.J. has to leave behind her horse, Red, and her best friend. T.J. has a hard time adjusting to city life and making new friends--until she meets Elizabeth: a punky teenager who lives with her family in the walls of T.J.'s house. Elizabeth is a Little by name. And literally, standing only six inches tall.

As time passes, the girls form an unlikely friendship and begin an even more surprising adventure as they navigate their way through Little-lore and the urban streets of Newford as T.J. tries to help Elizabeth find her way in the Big world (and maybe find her own place in Newford at the same time).

This novel is extremely complicated stylistically. The story is told in multiple points-of-view with varying narration styles. The amazing thing about this technique is that De Lint still manages to create a seamless narration. He transitions between sections easily without being redundant or leaving the reader at a loss.

In order to better establish the difference between the narrations, De Lint writes T.J.'s section using the traditional third-person, past tense narration ("Jane walked to the store.") incorporating periods from Geoff or Jaime's perspective to flesh out certain events. Elizabeth's sections, on the other hand, are written in the first-person, present tense ("I walk to the store."), a style that is becoming very common in contemporary novels. (This style is also what makes Elizabeth's sections of the narration sound more like De Lint's other YA Newford novel, "The Blue Girl.")

Most of the novel is set in the course of two very eventful days for the girls. Nonetheless, the narrative feels expansive. De Lint takes his time, fleshing out the details of T.J. and Elizabeth's adventures. The story is also fairly light, maintaining a generally upbeat feel.

The important thing to remember about the story is that T.J. is fourteen while Elizabeth is sixteen or seventeen. For this reason, T.J.'s sections of the story read younger than the rest. And rightly so. In addition to creating very individual "voices" for the protagonist's, De Lint also makes their age difference (and personality differences) clear with the divergent focuses of their narrative segments. That's really hard to do without making the characters seem exaggerated or flat.

Unfortunately, for prolific authors like De Lint comparisons become inevitable. The most obvious one being between "Little (Grrl) Lost" and "The Blue Girl" because the novels are both YA and close together in terms of publications. To be clear, this is not a fair comparison. "The Blue Girl" is longer which means it has more space to deal with plot issues, and the characters are older which means they are not going to sound like T.J. In fact, beyond being set in Newford, the books have nothing in common.

"Little (Grrl) Lost" does, however, have the same character types as "The Blue Girl": punk "bad" girl (Elizabeth/Imogen) and normal "goody-two-shoes" girl (T.J./Maxine). The difference is that the "good girl" gets a chance to voice her own opinions instead of leaving all of the narration to her best friend. This narrative split does, of course, create a different kind of novel but it is used here to good effect.

Despite it's relatively short length, "Little (Grrl) Lost" is rich with detail, but the narrative is never over the top with description or explanation. Even with its numerous narrative voices, the story is never redundant. Basically, "Little (Grrl) Lost" gets everything right in terms of writing conventions. De Lint once again brings Newford and his characters (Big or Little) to life in this vivid and magical novel.

Charles de Lint once said, "The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them."

Magical Folk are very particular who they appear to and not every Tom, Dick, or Mary can see them.

T.J., in LITTLE (GRRL) LOST, has the sight.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.....

T.J. has been hearing that sound for days now as she lay in her bed at night. Each time she turns on her light to investigate, the noises stop. She hopes its not mice making the racket. It didn't sound like mice and when she leaned her ear up against the baseboard she thought she actually heard....voices. Crazy, huh?

But then the impossible happened -- a door in the wall suddenly opened, splashing a stream of light, and out walked a little girl with bright blue hair and a dufflebag slung over her shoulder. She looked to be about six inches tall. Her parents were demanding that she come back this instant.

T.J. thought she was dreaming, but yet she was wide awake and this little girl was talking to her. She had a huge attitude, making her seem much taller than her six inches. It turned out that they had a lot in common and that night was the start of a friendship.

With two plots running, the main lesson learned from this story is that it doesn't matter if you are a Little or a Big, learning about yourself is a growing process that at times takes you on journeys you never would have imagined.

I didn't read much fantasy until a student put one of Charles de Lint's books in my hand - from that moment on I was hooked. His work (at least the ones I have read) I find to be engaging and easy to read. LITTLE (GRRL) LOST, his newest offering, is no exception. I finished it within a couple of hours. I think what I like most about his work is that it is not hardcore dark fantasy. Instead, it is contemporary fiction with all of the fantastical elements needed to be considered a fantasy selection - fairies, gnomes, goblins, and other magical creatures.

Reviewed by: coollibrarianchick

I have been an avid fan of Mr. De Lint, ever since I picked up a copy of Waifs and Strays. Waifs and Strays showed me that Charles De Lint was a writer capable of taking youth seriously-of not attempting to be 'edgy,' of not pretending to be someone he wasn't. I felt like he wasn't making some sort of leap and bound to get into our heads, he was just using teenagers as characters, playing off their hopes, dreams, and insecurities the same as any other types of characters. When I read his 2004 novel, The Blue Girl, I was reaffirmed. Maxine was a believable teenager, struggling to live up to the pressures mounted upon her by her mother, while Imogen was a teenager who was wise beyond her years, simply from having made almost every possible mistake at a young age. These characters never seemed like they were written for teenagers, simply that they were written. Sadly, this sets them apart from Charles De Lint's newest YA novel, Little (Grrl) Lost. The title itself is rather annoying, using a cutesy phrase, and adding a rather mundane piece of teen slang smack dab in the middle, while at the same time making a quite obvious pun on the word, "Little." However, I'm not here to talk about the title. I'm here to talk about the work. While I must say that I found it enjoyable, I can't say that I thought it was good. To say that the two are the same is to place Meg Cabot and Charles Dickens on nearly the same literary tier. Little (Grrl) Lost is an easy read. If I thought that anything Charles De Lint wrote was meant to be 'easy,' than I would simply give him a pat on the head for this book. To be completely honest, I don't understand where Charles De Lint was trying to go with this book. It's almost as if he tried, quite desperately, to cram several dozen concepts into two-hundred and sixty eight pages, and managed only to get the basic levels of each of them. So many wonderful characters are overlooked, and several actions go unexplained. For example, why did Geoff act in such an abrasive manner towards TJ? It's quite obvious that he isn't actually that bad of a guy. Also, what do we really know about Jaime? Or Red? Or Derek? What about Jan, Hadley, or Mina? So many side characters, that if they were fleshed out, could easily make the book good, all on their own, are completely overlooked. Why? To be honest, this book never really seemed to be a story. It seemed to be the groundwork for a story-but not one in and of itself. Yes, certain aspects were good in their own right, for instance, the scene with the Goblin Market, or the experience with Sheri. Now, I know that Charles De Lint tries to limit his adult characters to mere cameos during YA books, but it really seemed like Sheri was propped up as some sort of goal in order to make the story progress. As for the two main characters, Elizabeth and TJ, I came out of it knowing next to nothing about them. Elizabeth simply seems rather flat, and her personality seems to suddenly change. Three weeks of friendship and one day as a baker do not a selfless person make. And TJ? I couldn't tell what to make of TJ. To be honest, her seeming to be a normal kid, and then being played off as being inexplicably 'wise beyond her years' kind of bothered me. I think that there should have been more expanding on those weeks that TJ and Elizabeth spent together, as it felt rather annoying, having those weeks suddenly jerked out from under me. To conclude this review, I'd simply like to say that I think this is a great story-one I'd very much like to read, and that I certainly haven't. What I've read, what this book is, is the bottom layer. I have the basics of many personalities, and I have the setup of a story-but I want to know more. Who was the girl with the mohawk hats? Why is Red such a nice guy? Why is Geoff a jerk? And what about Elizabeth's parents? The off-screen way in which they were played reminded me of the adults in the Peanuts cartoons, which are voiced only with a trumpet. All in all, this could be a great story-but this book isn't.

Little (Grrl) Lost is one of the latest in Charles de Lint's popular Newford series. Widely credited as the father of the contemporary magic realism genre, de Lint is best known for his stories set in the vaguely North American city known as Newford, where strange magical occurrences are the everyday norm for those who know where to look. Though I personally think that short stories are de Lint's real strength, I have enjoyed several of his novels including, most notably, the popular The Blue Girl. Little (Grrl) Lost follows in a similar tradition of young adult novels that de Lint has branched into in more recent years.

When T.J. first moves from her family's comfortable farm in the country to a brand new house in the Newford suburbs, she couldn't be less thrilled. She's been forced to give up her home, her friends, and her pony, Red, to move to a place where she doesn't feel like she fits in at all. And then all of a sudden she is propelled into the secret world of magic and fairy when the six-inch-tall, blue-haired, loud-mouthed Elizabeth storms into her life in the middle of the night. Elizabeth is a Little, and she's dying to make her debut in the Big world beyond the inside of T.J.'s family's walls.

What follows is a charming and enjoyable story about friendship, independence, and self-discovery that takes places in a wild goose chase through the unseen places that comprise Newford's world of fairy. De Lint addresses many of the issues facing young teens, including, prominently, the desire to belong. Both T.J and Elizabeth start out feeling lost in a world that doesn't want to accommodate them, but both discover that even a country girl can find friends in the city, and that even a Little can find a place to belong in a Big world. In this journey of self-discovery, de Lint uses magic as a metaphor for how overwhelming and startling it can be to a teenager trying to make their way in a brand new environment. His message is heart-felt and ultimately reassuring, but to me it just did not convey the same strength and sense of style that characterizes his more mature novels. Some of the same themes were there: notably, his common themes of abuse and bullying, however they were very smoothed over in this novel. Written as it was for a younger audience that de Lint's usual fare, Little (Grrl) Lost is a lighter, fluffier read, full of a simple charm that replaced the darker currents found in his adult novels. Because I am a big fan of de Lint's more mature work, I did feel the difference immediately, but it did not stop my enjoyment of the piece.

My favorite scene took place in a Goblin Market underground, where de Lint's imaginative writing reminded me of why I read fantasy novels in the first place: to get lost in a strange and fantastic world. The ability to create a compelling and beautiful magic world is definitely one of his strengths as an author, and though Little (Grrl) Lost is certainly not his best work, the basic underpinnings were still definitely there. But if you are new to de Lint, you might want to check out The Blue Girl first.

Who hasn't wondered if others live among us? I know when I was a child I fantasized about fairies, elves, and other creatures living close by. Okay, I admit, I always had a very vivid imagination. But what would you do if you actually did see one?

One such girl does in the book LITTLE (GRRL) LOST.

T.J.'s family has to relocate to the suburbs after a recent stock market crash. T.J. hates her new home. She's lonely for her friends and especially her horse Red, who she had to leave behind.

After hearing noises in the wall of her new home, out pops Elizabeth a 'little' who's 6 inches tall. But don't let Elizabeth's size fool you. She's packed with mega 'tude.

Both T.J. and Elizabeth forge a friendship. Everything is okay, in a rocky sort of way. Elizabeth's family has moved on but T.J. finds an author who has written stories about 'littles' that are uncannily real. Both agree to go to a booksigning in order to ask the author if she can help Elizabeth know where her parents have gone. While on the way, T.J. is bullied by a group of boys who steal her backpack, where Elizabeth is hiding.

Elizabeth is not so tough when she finds herself out in the open where things like cats can prove deadly. She runs into a 'Ranger' who shares secrets of her family. Elizabeth goes out searching for the truth.

T.J. in the meantime is sick with worrying about Elizabeth. She ends up looking for the author who has written stories about littles, hoping she might be able to help her find Elizabeth.

Once again Charles De Lint doesn't disappoint. I enjoyed following T.J.'s adventures trying to find Elizabeth. At first T.J. is timid but later she learns to trust her instincts on who to trust and what to do in order to help her 'little' friend. Elizabeth also learns along her own path in our world. This tale has a little bit of something for everyone. The reality of our world seen through the eyes of a 'little' is believable. Also I liked how T.J.'s character grew throughout the story.

In de Lint's world of Newford, help and friendship come unbidden, when you most need it and when you least expect it.

I really enjoyed this book and especially the relationship between T.J. and Elizabeth. They have a sibling-esque dynamic and they play well off each other. Even though Elizabeth is only six inches tall, she is fierce, independent, sassy and wants more than being a Little has to offer. She encourages (almost berates) T.J. to take chances and to take advantage of being a "Big", because after all, T.J. can wear cool clothes and do what she wants. Although T.J. admires Elizabeth for her bravado, she is timid and feels awkward and is not quite ready to do everything that her friend encourages her to do. But a series of events separate them and they each have to go through their own personal growth, so to speak, where they have to rely on their wits to see them through.

T.J. is trying to find Elizabeth and at the same time discover more information about Littles. Elizabeth is trying to discover if an old wives tale about her kind is true. There were a few parts that seemed a bit convoluted and one or two scenes that didn't work for me but in the end it all tied together. As in all Charles de Lint books the mundane and magical mix and here it blended in a clever and enchanting way. I think that since T.J. is 14 and Elizabeth is 17 it could appeal to a variety of ages as well as so called "adults" like me.

To separate the two viewpoints of Elizabeth and T.J., de Lint used a first person viewpoint for Elizabeth and a third person point of view for T.J. I felt much more connected to Elizabeth and honestly at times, T.J.'s behavior bothered me. However, the very actions that I thought were immature led to more events that helped her own self discovery.

I had to ask myself when I finished this book if I would have liked it as much if it wasn't written by Charles de Lint, because I am a little biased. Although I do admit that it is not my favorite Charles de Lint book, I do feel that he built tension and the plot had enough surprises to keep my interest. This is a book I would give a young reader to introduce them to one of my favorite authors.

I sat down to read this book, and finished it in one sitting. it was a quick read, but an enjoyable one. T.J., fourteen and newly moved to the suburbs from the city, and having a hard time dealing with giving up her horse, Red, meets Elizabeth, a seventeen year-old, six inch tall girl. Elizabeth is a Little, and running away from her family because they don't understand her (typical teenage behavoir). T.J. and Elizabeth encounter several new beings and make friends and enemies along the way.

I thought the development of the two girls was great, as well as the introduction of magical characters like gnomes, fairies, and the Rat King. I felt that some of the other characters were a little lacking, especially Geoff and Sheri. But the plot moved along at a good pace, and it was great to see T.J. and Elizabeth grow-they were both very believable characters. This is a good book for anyone who enjoys young adult fiction, as well as modern fantasy.

As a Charles de Lint fan, I default to liking this book, though not as much as CDL's 'adult' novels. The characterisation is good and the descriptions of life and the scenery in the urban world is lovely.

As others have pointed out the novel is aimed at younger readers, low to mid teens I'd say - which is why, as an adult, I have rated it 3 stars. For a teen it would be 4 stars.

Overall, Charles de Lint's novel Little (Grrl) Lost was mediocre, bordering on disappointing. I have had no experience with de Lint's other novels, however I have heard that he is something of a pioneer in the so-called "contemporary fantasy" genre in which fantastical or mythic elements are blended with realism and the modern world.

Perhaps the major shortcoming in Little (Grrl) Lost was lack of depth. Depth of setting, character, and actions and consequences makes a speculative fiction piece believable. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure if this book was attempting to be realistic or not. T.J. "Googled" a made-up race of Littles and got hits: who would know someone wasn't making it up? Role-playing? Writing a tabloid-type online magazine? The juxtaposition of realistic and unrealistic details was jarring and confusing, and the random realistic details seemed to me a cheap way to add believability in the absence of depth.

Not only were setting details and actions rather shallow and unbelievable, I had a hard time imagining T.J. and Elizabeth and T.J.'s various romantic interests throughout the book. I was told several times about Elizabeth's attitude and punkiness but I got a picture in my head of a whiny, immature teenage Little who acted half her age. "I'm totally hot and bored..." says she. I thought, yes, me too. The other characters were just as inhuman and flat.

(This is not to say, however, that this "genre" is at fault. Many novels sharing characteristics with Little (Grrl) Lost have been far more successful, such as Tamsin by Robert Beagle, in terms of characterization and setting depth, and Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer, in terms of juxtaposition of the real world and realism with the fairy world.)

Another flaw was the very pointedly, excuse the oxymoron, flat chapter titles. Although the novel's title shows some originality, I am a little, er, lost, as to what value it adds to the novel. Although I was vaguely aware that the book was indeed about a Little who was Lost, the title is just about as flat and unexciting as the plot itself. At any rate, reiterating every chapter title would be a little tedious, but let's just say I was hardly impressed by chapter titles, which I largely ignore but this time found rather unpleasant, such as "Don't Call Me Tetty" (seriously sounds like a bad country and western song title), "And I Bid You Goodnight" (the book had nothing to suggest that the passage of day was significant to the plot or symbolism), and "The Blues Ain't Nothing But a Girl Six Inches Tall" (no comment necessary) (Perhaps this had something to do with the recurrent theme of rock bands throughout the book, but if so, why the blues?).

I don't want to absolutely crush this book to dust...At least a few redeeming features exist. First of all I thought the idea was quite original and might have been pretty funny and even decently cute. I'm not aware of de Lint's other novels but it sounds to me like funny and cute are not two features of his better writing, if I were to make a very wild guess. Second, I was glad that Hedley and actually most of the fairy folk were somewhat likable characters. Third, I was impressed at de Lint's inclusion of some serious and relevant subject matter: gangs, fashion, music, teenage romance, and more.

If I were to propose a theory as to why the novel turned out why it did, knowing that the first chapter was originally a short story, I might suggest that de Lint merely stretched the scope and complexity of the short story to fit a novel-sized number of pages, thinning out the story, as it were, rather than expanding and enriching the details and depth of the story to justify the length.

Conclusion: A potentially original and wide-ranging story is rendered rather shallowly and vaguely in a manner that seems to suggest that all people T.J.'s age are incapable of handling literature.