The Department of Lost & Found: A Novel [Paperback]

Allison Winn Scotch (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 3, 2011

“Allison Winn Scotch is the real deal and The Department of Lost and Found is one you absolutely won’t want to miss.”
—Johanna Edwards, author of The Next Big Thing

“Funny, touching, tender, true….I loved it.”
—Pamela Redmond Satran, author of Suburbanistas

A Redbook Magazine Editor’s Choice, Allison Winn Scotch’s sparkling debut novel, The Department of Lost and Found, is a story that makes you laugh and cry in equal measure. This funny and uplifting tale of a young woman overcoming bad odds and changing her life, as she discovers unexpected truths about her friends, her family, and herself, is one that Julie Buxbaum and Jennifer Weiner fans will not soon forget.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Some side-effects of cancer treatment are pretty fabulous in magazine writer Scotch's debut novel. Natalie Miller, a driven 30-year-old senior aideto a woman senator from New York, is having a rough time: just days after she's diagnosed with breast cancer, her cheating live-in boyfriend ditches her. She's feeling gloomy, then, when she begins chemo. (Her hunky and sweet gynecologist, Zach, is a mitigating factor.) Though the election is six weeks away, Natalie is ordered to stay home, where she writes in her diary (excerpts appear throughout) and becomes addicted to The Price Is Right while an ambitious junior aide takes over her job. Natalie battles through rounds of chemo and a mastectomy until, out of the blue, an old love, up-and-coming rocker Jake, comes back to take care of her. He seems intent on making things work, but Natalie's long-simmering (and seemingly requited) attraction to Zach only intensifies. Meanwhile, Natalie's journalist friend Sally lands her first big story: an exposé of Natalie's boss. Her loyalties on the line and her cancer on the wane, Natalie makes some tough choices about the postcancer person she wants to be. Character development is secondary to the affirmative message in this bonbon of a cancer book. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Natalie Miller is the senior aide to a senator from New York, and nothing stands in her way--not even friends and lovers. Nothing, that is, until she is diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. Her live-in boyfriend leaves, her chemo treatments nearly kill her, and her job is in jeopardy. For the first time in her life, Natalie has time on her hands, and she uses it to examine her life. What she finds is a string of relationships that ended basically because she let them. And she discovers that the senator to whom she has devoted so much is less interested in issues than in election results. And most disturbing, the love that she thought she lost was never really hers at all. Scotch handles the topic of cancer with humor and hope, never dipping into the maudlin. The ending gets a bit saccharine in places, but the changes and realizations that the characters make are profound and moving nonetheless. An impressive debut. Elizabeth Dickie
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 314 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (May 3, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006116142X
• ISBN-13: 978-0061161421
• Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 5.1 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #828,214 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Allison Winn Scotch is the bestselling author of THE ONE THAT I WANT, TIME OF MY LIFE, and THE DEPARTMENT OF LOST AND FOUND. Her fourth novel, THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME, will be released in early 2012. Prior to delving into fiction, she was a frequent contributor to numerous magazines and websites including Cooking Light, Men's Health, Fitness, Glamour, and Redbook, and now focuses on celebrity profiles for a variety of magazines. She lives in New York with her family. For more about her and her books, go to allisonwinn.com or follow her on Twitter at @aswinn.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Just didn't grab me too much June 12, 2007

By Julia

Format:Hardcover

I actually feel really bad doing this because everyone gave it five stars but I just want to be honest. I really liked the first half of the book. But then as it went on I started to find Natalie really annoying. I know she had cancer and all but I just couldn't relate to her (not because she had cancer) but because of her workaholic nature and her general personality. And I guess I had absolutely no interest in her field, which was politics. She was a brave character but maybe too so. I guess I was just looking for more sadness and very emotional moments, which I feel this book didn't really have (for me). Her aloof attitude with Zach was really starting to get to me as well. Once the Price is Right encounter started I said, ok, that's it, I can't read this anymore. So I skimmed ahead to see what happened and that was that. I think the writer writes well but the story just turned me away after 1/2 way through. However, I would still read any future book that she publishes.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book! May 31, 2007

By Kathryn J. Alexander

Format:Hardcover

Allison Winn Scotch manages to take a depressing topic, and writes a book that is insightful, touching, thoughtful, mature, and, at times, hysterically funny!

How could a book about a woman with [...] cancer be hilarious? The Department of Lost and Found is a brilliant combination of multiple modes of written and verbal expression - text, emails, diary entries, Blackberry messages, voice mails and more, which all combine to make this an entertaining, modern novel. A large undercurrent of the book reminisces about cheesy, old television shows. The Price is Right, for one, plays a significant role; Natalie's new obsession with this game show culminates in her appearance on the show--which is marred by a variety of complications including urgent back-stage Blackberry messages to a United States senator's office, a slightly illicit cross-country trip with her gynecologist, sweaty armpits, Bob Barker's bad make-up job, and how-in-the-world-would-a-New-Yorker-know-how-much-a-patio-set-costs-we-don't-do-patio-sets-in-New-York-City! all coalesce into a memorably hilarious scene.

TDLF is also a fascinating study on imperfection; each character has his or her own share of flaws, but these flaws draw lives together in a meaningful way. Heartless old boyfriends, dirty office politics, dirty national politics, dirty family laundry, personal indiscretions, uncertainties, mistakes and apologies, and much more, make this book such a great read. The book also explores many of the ironies of life - how one can realize stunning beauty in an imperfect and scarred body, find strength among weakness, insatiable hunger while undergoing chemotherapy(thanks to pot-induced munchies), truth among lies, and most of all how love can be lost - and found - in the most unsuspecting of circumstances.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Breast cancer as the ultimate life makeover May 14, 2008

By cindyinthewind

Format:Paperback

While this book is well written and engaging in many ways (and the divergence into "The Price Is Right" entertaining), I had a few problems with it. And not just because its heroine, Natalie Miller, is designed to be one of those unsympathetic protagonists, and maybe is even more so to me because she grew up a child of privilege (I didn't), is an ex-Ivy Leaguer and sorority girl (I'm not), and has a very tony job working for a NY senator (I don't) that allows her to wear shoes that cost in the three figures (etc.). She's also hard as nails and appears to have no conscience and no life beyond her work, and to have an ambition to someday become President because...well, she would love to be President. My issue with her is that this novel uses the experience of breast cancer to transform its unsympathetic protagonist from Ms. Hardass into Ms. Wonderful, and in some ways, the transformation is just a bit too magical for me.

Sure, Natalie has to cope with fatigue and depression and feeling ugly and out of sorts. Yes, she has to cope with feeling that she's falling behind at work and being left out of the loop. And she has to deal with losing her old body and getting used to a new one, from breasts to weight to hair. And yes, she even has to stare down the possibility of her own death if all of her efforts fail. Through these trials, she does become a more sympathetic and empathetic person. One more human and principled, who has learned to value what really matters, and how to tell people without values where they can stick it. She also becomes more able to reach out and ask for help when she needs to. And yeah, she learns to smoke pot, which I guess is supposed to be some kind of a virtue (whatever)....

However, she also becomes someone whose biggest romantic dilemma is whether to stay with her returned ex, an up-and-coming rock star who's always abandoning her for a gig, or to fall for the Dr. McDreamy who seems to be falling for her (for no particular reason other than his admiration of how she's fighting her disease) yet allows himself to be manipulated into restarting a dead relationship with one of her friends (why? Is he so much of a wimp that he can't just say no?). In other words, when it comes to romance, we should all be so miserable...This stuff touches on fantasy fulfillment a bit, and makes me question whether some of her decisions are so wise. Is one man so terrible for her because the Stones invited him to tour with them and he wants to go? Is the other so wonderful, considering that he's letting himself get led around by the nose by an ex he doesn't seem to love anymore? Also, Natalie mentions a few times that she is looking for her "alpha." I wonder what she means by this: her "alpha and omega," as in, her be-all and end-all? Should anyone be that to anyone else? Or her "alpha person" or "alpha male," so she can just meekly follow behind while he takes the lead? She doesn't even seem like a person who wants to follow someone. One wonders why such a strong-personalitied woman would want to follow an even stronger-personalitied man. (In any case, it doesn't seem as if either of these men fit that description, or as if it would be good if they did.)

But finally, the flaw that most concerns me about this novel is that it maintains the non-cancer-sufferer's myth of the cancer patient as more brave and courageous than everyone else. From what I read in the interview with the author included at the end of my edition, she was inspired to write it by a friend who died of breast cancer. After I finished the book, I wasn't surprised to find that she was an onlooker to the breast cancer experience rather than someone who had experienced it herself, because if she was, she'd know better. She'd know that fighting cancer doesn't mean you're brave or courageous; it's just something you're doing because you have it, and the only other alternative is letting it take its course and dying, so you fight it. Natalie asks early in the book whether she isn't just doing what she has to do, but the question is never answered; at the end, we're left with the impression that she is indeed brave and courageous, and that her positive attitude has made a difference. In fact, she tells us, studies show that a positive attitude helps patients beat cancer. The truth is quite the opposite: studies are showing that positive attitudes DON'T necessarily improve survival rates. I feel that the author, while trying to pay tribute to her friend by telling the story of a cancer patient in first-person form, didn't pay her quite fair tribute by painting her as more of a heroic figure than she probably would have painted herself. Also, she gives the misleading impression that a breast cancer patient in remission is officially out of the woods after five years without a recurrence. That is true of other cancers, but breast cancer is not like that; technically, it can recur at any time, even if some forms of it are less likely to return than others. And that would be a fact that Natalie, as a younger person at diagnosis with a more aggressive form of cancer, would have to live with for the rest of her life. She's never shown here contemplating how this might affect her, her relationship with a man (it doesn't seem to worry the guys she's with at all), or her dreams to become President someday (can you imagine how her opposition would hype her unfitness for office by emphasizing that she might have a recurrence?).

The author mentions that this book isn't really about the experience of breast cancer, it's about the experience of self-transformation, and that the protagonist's breast cancer is merely used here as a catalyst to get that self-transformation process in motion. Maybe that's the problem, right there. I had hoped I'd be reading a book about breast cancer, and this book isn't really about breast cancer, it's about a woman in need of a life makeover. Breast cancer is merely the trigger that forces her to make over her life. If you're looking for a story about a woman who's happy with her life as it is and doesn't want breast cancer to change it, or one who's trying to deal with breast cancer at the same time as she's coping with other serious problems in her life (and I mean stuff more serious than "my boyfriend is dumping me" or "my boss might lose the election"), or one who has breast cancer whose problems involve not only getting better but also paying the treatment bills, best look elsewhere.

An interesting sidelight of this book is that it's about a woman who works for a fictional woman senator from New York, and one wonders whether the character of Senator Dupris is based on any real-life person we might know. Especially given that one of Senator Dupris' favorite phrases is "I'm in it to win it," and that she seems to have no moral compunctions and to be willing to do whatever is politically expedient. Perhaps her resemblance to any persons living or dead is, as they always say, entirely coincidental. I guess only the author knows for sure!

To wrap up: Yes, this is a story of breast cancer as Life-Transforming Experience for somebody who badly needs one. The danger? It perpetuates the idea that breast cancer can actually be a good thing, because it can make you change your life. Yes, it can (although it needn't), but it can also END your life. Maybe it would have been better if Natalie had just gotten canned by that senator at the beginning of the book. She could have had the same Life-Transforming Experience without any of the threat to her life--and she would've gotten to keep her breasts, too. Read more ›

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars It'll get you to embrace your life May 11, 2007

By Sharon Naylor

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I absolutely LOVE this book! Allison Winn Scotch has written a phenomenal debut novel that's perfect for all women who are facing a big life transition of any kind -- whether it's getting married or turning 30, or 40, or 50, seeing your kids go off to college, etc. You'll find yourself thinking about how you got to be where you are, the people who helped form you along the way, and what you really need to embrace about your life right now. This is a GREAT read, and you'll think about it for a long time after the book is done. Not too many novels stay with you and inspire you like this one does. Great job, Allison! I hope you're working on your next novel right now, because I can't wait to read that one, too!