Customer Reviews

Lost

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(28)
2 star:		(58)
1 star:		(65)

 

 

Gregory Maguire quickly rose to fame with his apparently creative look at the Wicked Witch from Oz when he wrote Wicked. Since then, more books distorting or looking at fairy tales differently have been written (including a sequel of sorts to Wicked due out this year) by Maguire. After hearing about the novel and the musical Wicked, I decided I would check out Maguire and see if I would enjoy him. The bookstore was out of Wicked but they did have Lost.

I almost wish they didn't. Not just because I didn't like the book but because it made me almost not want to read Wicked.

I did not care for this novel. Lost was interesting in the beginning but it quickly lost any sort of momentum as it progressed. It begins with an eye-catching scene of a car accident that the protagonist Winnie sees and tries to help. Then it quickly moves to an adoption service Forever Families and we briefly meet families both in the traditional and non-traditional sense who are in the process of trying to adopt. Then we're off to England where Winnie is supposed to meet her step cousin and "friend" John Comestor. But when she arrives, he's nowhere to be seen, the house is being worked on, there's a loud pounding coming from the chimney, no one wants to really talk to Winnie and weird things are happening.

The problem for me was that Maguire seemed to gloss over everything. He keeps the reader distanced from the characters. Not once did I feel like I got to know Winnie. On one hand this was partially intentional as Winnie herself is a very distanced character who retreats into her writing when faced with a situation she doesn't want to acknowledge. Ironically enough, the one area that Winnie was a bit too revealing involves a "plot twist" I guess. I hate to call it so because it is the ONLY thing that was concretely and blatantly obvious.

But on the other, Maguire's own writing was distant, glossed over details so that I had to reread passages to make sure I wasn't missing things. Its as if Maguire is attempting to write in the vein of minimalism. I love minimalistic novels when done correctly. I'm an avid reader, I read a good two books or so a week on average and nothing grates on me more when I have to reread something because the writing was vague. I don't know how to convey this point, exactly. Some of my favorite novels are vague, but effectively vague. They let you decide how to view the plot and don't hold you by the hand. It's as if Maguire was trying to do this, trying to write a post modern or minimalistic novel and failed. Does that make sense?

Part of the problem is also that Maguire is trying to balance too many balls at once. Because not only is all of the things above happening, but there's also the story of Jack the Ripper's remains that may or may not be a part of the story, the fact that Winnie's ancestor may or may not have been the basis for Scrooge, the fact that Winnie may or not be crazy, her cousin may or may not be dead and the whole place may or not be haunted. That's a lot of may or may nots to have in a novel that's 335 pages long.

I do think Maguire could be a decent author. He has a way with metaphors and similes that do well in conveying either symbolism or what is actually happening. The problem, for me, was that there was not a spine to this novel. It felt as if it were trying to be too many different things at once and the story got away from Maguire. I do want to try another of his novels because I do think he probably is a good author; there were some great passages and sequences that were highly entertaining and weird. For instance, the neighbor living downstairs with the cats and who has to leave herself notes was perfect. Great character and a great sequence. The problem is that the plot as a whole left much to be desired.

The end result to me was such a wishy-washy mess that when all of the story threads "came together" I didn't care. The last third of the novel I read to have a conclusion and get it over with, not because I genuinely cared. It's hard to care about a character you don't ever get to know. The end result is that I should have listened to the reviews here instead of the critical praises saying "A brilliant, perceptive, and deeply moving fable about loss...". I'd recommend you do the same. Here's hoping Wicked is much better.

I was halfway through this book before I got fed up with the fact that there is no focus for where the story is going. It seems like Maguire had a sudden, great idea for a story and then lost steam and interest as it went along. I enjoyed Wicked and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister immensely, but this was just awful. Can I give out no stars???

"Lost," which examines, deconstructs, and riffs on English children's stories (to say nothing of Dante's Inferno) begins with a blocked hack writer named Winifred Rudge leaving her native Boston for a visit to her step-cousin's flat in London-a flat in a house that, we are told, was built by one of her ancestors, a man who may have been the inspiration for Dickens's Scrooge.

On her arrival Winnie finds her step-cousin absent and the apartment in the possession of two looney contractors, who are building an illegal stairway to the roof.

Winnie tries to cope, ordering the contractors about and making myriad and unsuccessful efforts to find her step-cousin, John Comestor, and meeting a series of eccentric people. Unlike the "Alice" stories, however, Winnie is less mentally competent (and far less likable) than Lewis Carroll's practical little girl, while the professor of medieval history, the spiritualist, the dotty old lady, and the woman who casts children's hands for a living are clever for the most part, and more than somewhat sympathetic. And, if this weren't enough, the place is quite possibly haunted. And the ghost is possibly Jack the Ripper's.

Well now!

Author Gregory Maguire, best-known for his clever "Wicked," a re-write of "The Wizard of Oz" told from the witch's point of view, ventures forth here without a safety net, concocting a story that's all his own. Without the constraints of having to hew to the plot lines of a tale familiar to us all (he couldn't have let the witch survive, now could he?) this time out Maguire creates something that's all his. And in doing so he manages to make what at first seems hauntingly terrifying in the end quite explicable, if no less disturbing. It frightens, but maybe not in the way you'd expect.

Notes and asides: The cover design and illustrations by Douglas Smith are stunning. Yes, this edition comes complete with the now apparently obligatory reader's group questions ("in what way is fantasy a distraction from the real world?"). Those of Maguire's readers who complain that this book is _not_ like "Wicked" would be advised to recall Joni Mitchell's famous admonition that nobody ever asked Van Gogh to paint "Starry Night" again.

"Lost" is a novel about an aspiring author--Winnie Rudge--that travels to London to write a novel about a woman who is being haunted by the ghost of Jack the Ripper. Her ancestor is supposedly where Dickens got the idea for Ebenezer Scrooge. But she herself gets caught up in a mystery... While staying at her cousin's house, she hears somthing behind the walls. And where is her cousin? Could the tapping be his dead spirit? Or maybe even the ghosts that haunted Scrooge? But when she tears down the wall, she finds something suprising...

This darkly humorous novel had a great plot idea, but with a confusing ending and hard-to-understand prose, it made the book fall apart. Don't read this if you are expecting a fun read or a happy ending. But don't give up on Gregory Maguire--"Confessions of An Ugly Stepsister" and "Wicked" shows he really does have a true talent!

I just love Gregory Maguire. That being said, I wasn't to impressed by Lost. I felt that it left out to many details about Winnie. By the time you figured out what was going on something else happened. Also the other characters just came and went with out any explanation. I also am curious as to why the chapters were so long.

Without question, Lost is a novel designed to delight those who, like Winifred Ridge, the main character, had childhoods steeped in British literature for children. As she moves through the story, Winnie delights the reader with an array of quotes and references ranging from Charles Dickens to Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carroll and Edward Gorey.
As with the majority of his adult novels, Gregory Maguire infuses well-known literature (The Wizard of Oz in the case of Wicked and Cinderella in the instance of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister) with modern settings and sensibilities. It may even have become his trademark. Yet with Lost, Maguire takes his thematic material further into a synthesis of multiple stories and factual events (A Christmas Carol, Peter Pan, suggestions of Jack the Ripper just to name a few) creating a richer, deeper level of story telling.
The novel is as character driven as Wicked, and again Maguire paints a touchingly human and flawed character as he created with Elphaba and I grew to love Winnie is much the same manner as I did the witch of Wicked. But Lost is a somewhat more complex and ambitious work than Confessions or Wicked and it requires more of the reader. It functions as a mystery novel on both the supernatural and psychological levels and never failed to keep me entranced. Yes, the ending is thoughtfully indirect and demands a bit of detective work from the reader, but that is simply a part of the charm. I found Lost to be thoroughly spooky, captivating and enjoyable.

A lot of people seem to have read _Wicked_, tried _Lost_ and been terribly disappointed. I found the book actually MORE satisfying than _Wicked_. I hope that you will give me a chance to sell you on _Lost_, because I think that you will enjoy it if you give it an honest chance. I read the book in the space of a two day business trip, and purposely begged off of social stuff and went to the airport four hours early so I could sit uninterrupted and read it.

I think one of the benefits of _Wicked_ that made others prefer it, is that _Wicked_ takes place in a world we are all familiar with. We have a world already in our heads, a world that Maguire then manipulates and redraws in novel and jarring ways. In _Lost_, however, we are presented with a ghost story of sorts in the present day, and the world is not there for us at the start. It is the real world, but viewed through a unique and interesting lens.

Maguire presents us with just as complex and ambivalent a heroine here as in _Wicked_. There are two narrative voices -- that of Winnie, and that of Winnie's character, Wendy, in the novel that Winnie is trying to write. As we all know, all characters in all works of fiction are in some way distillations of the author and friends and life. Plot points and locations are often taken from real life and manipulated to fit the story, and we learn most important information about Winnie's real life and real wounds through her attempt at a novel. It is a very simple but very effective technique, especially because Maguire's book is also a meditation on the way we construct narratives from our lives, both about ourselves and our place in the world, and about ghosts and the nature of haunting in our lives.

We journey with Winnie from contemplating the usual canned ideas of ghosts-- that ghosts with unfinished business are haunting the world, unable to move on to the next world, lost in this one. And we move to a much deeper understanding of ghosts, and of Winnie. In _Lost_, there is unfinished business, there is haunting. And not just by ghosts.

I found _Lost_ to be wonderful reading and highly recommend it.

I had a lot of hope for this book when I started. With the cover art and the description, I expected something more along thelines of a ghost story with literary connections, etc. Well, lets just say this piece of "work" does not know where it is going. The ghost story I was hoping for was incomplete and garbled. And what is the point of the whole Scrooge storyline?
Maguire could have just as easily left Scrooge out of it and it wouldn't effect the plot a whole lot. I guess Maguire just has to have some literary gimmick.
I was left scratching my head at the end of it. I felt a little cheated or perhaps more accurately, mislead. The book isn't horrible but it just isn't worth the effort.

I wouldn't feel so disappointed in this book if I didn't find his previous two novels, ("Wicked, and "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister)so creative and original."Lost" just seems to be bogged down by it's own ambition. Leaving behind the fairy tales of his previous books, Maguire sets his story in present day with a very vaguely drawn protagonist named Winifred Rudge. A writer who has stumbled out of the gate with a case of writers block, she goes to England to visit her cousin and do some research on her book. The cousin however is nowhere to be found, and instead she's confronted with two frightened contractors who while renovating the cousins house believe they have come upon something supernatural behind the walls of the chimney.
Maybe it was supposed to be suspenseful and nail biting. I didn't get it. I think alot of the problem for me was a woman I couldn't get a handle on who was the center of the story. Was she mean, nice? It's never really clear. Later a plot point is introduced (that I won't give away), that in another novel could be great,yet here it just baffled me even more in regards to Winnie. It was a bummer to get to the end and think: Who cares? If you've never read Maguire I'd suggest not starting here. Both "Wicked" and "...Stepsister" are much more interesting reads. "...Stepsister" is also being made into an ABC television movie of the week with Stockard Channing.

Winnie is a middle-aged author in search of new story. She travels to London to stay with her step-cousin John and hopefully find her spark of inspiration in Whitechapel, the former stomping grounds of Jack the Ripper. But when she arrives she discovers that the cousin is missing, the downstairs neighbor is acting crazy, and eerie things are happening in John's apartment.

Of the four Maguire books I've read (Lost, Wicked, Mirror Mirror, and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister), Lost is my least favorite. Maguire has a talent for taking a traditional tale and turning it on its head, which is what made the other three books so interesting and enjoyable. However, Lost is an original story without a fairytale framework to support it and as a result, it feels a little disjointed and ...well...kind of lost. (Pardon the pun, I couldn't resist.)

It is a relatively entertaining ghost story and Maguire uses a more direct style than normal (a refreshing change), but Lost just doesn't have the heart and soul that made the other three books so riveting. Maguire also wastes a lot of time on boring, go-nowhere tangents. I recommend any of the other three books over this one - Mirror Mirror is the best, IMO.