From Publishers Weekly
Hay's debut has all the elements of a literary thriller, but they don't quite come together. Arriving in New York from Tasmania with $300, her mother's ashes and a love of reading, 18-year-old Rosemary Savage finds work in the Arcade Bookshop, a huge, labyrinthine place that features everything from overstock to rare books. In its physicality, the store greatly resembles New York's Strand (where Hay worked), and its requisite assortment of intriguing bookish oddballs includes autocratic owner George Pike and his albino assistant, Walter Geist. Rosemary is suspicious and worried when Walter enlists Rosemary's help to respond to an anonymous request to sell a hand-written version of Herman Melville's lost
Isle of the Cross (a novel that in fact existed but disappeared after Melville's publisher rejected it). She confides in Oscar (the attractive, emotionally unavailable nonfiction specialist), which only hastens the deal's momentum toward disaster. Hay does a good job with innocent, intelligent Rosemary's attempts to deal with sinister doings, and methodically imagines the evolution and content of Melville's novel (which features a woman abandoned much like Rosemary's mother). Hay also ably captures Rosemary's nostalgic memories of Tasmania. The three narratives—intrigue, Melville, Tasmania—prove so different, however, that recurring themes of loss and abandonment fail to tie them together.
(Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
The Secret of Lost Things is many things at once: a mystery, a coming-of-age novel, and an inquiry into literary obsession. While critics noted that the novel aspires to such heights as A. S. Byatt's
Possession and Martha Cooley's
The Archivist, they generally agreed it reaches neither in scope or depth. Still, the characters, if sometimes caricatured, are vivid (except for Melville, whom we see only in letters); 1970s New York comes alive in its grit and anonymity; and the intriguing plot kept most reviewers on their toes. In sum, better literature about literary quests exists, but
The Secret of Lost Things will please diehard fans of the popular bookstore genre.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
