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2.72 AVERAGE
2.72 AVERAGE
I don't know if I liked this book in the general sense. I liked some of the methods Maguire used for revealing parts of the story, but I had trouble caring about Winnie and her issues. I thought the second half of the book was better, at least with my interest in what happens to Winnie. If someone is interested in reading the author, this isn't the book I'd recommend. If someone is interested in reading a post-modern novel about loss, love, and ghosts - it might be in the top 20, but not in the top 10.
From what I knew, [a:Gregory Maguire|7025|Gregory Maguire|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1319068553p2/7025.jpg] rewrote stories and fairy-tales into the "true story" for adults, which I enjoyed quite a bit with Wicked.
Lost, however, is a wholly new story that references A Christmas Carol, Jack the Ripper, Peter Pan, and Alice in Wonderland. This sounds like an interesting concept, I'm sure, but while G.M. is throwing the references in here and there, it's like he forgot about the main story line. Winnie/Wendy/Ophelia/Opal the main character comes to town, finds that her cousin (and former lover apparently, but you have to read that in the book, it isn't on the dust jacket or anything), John is missing. She stays in his house, harasses John's neighbors, employers, and girlfriend about his whereabouts (turns out he was just avoiding her). Contractors are fixing the house when she arrives, they bust down a wall and let out a ghost of some sort. The ghost possesses a cat and makes it eat other cats, then possesses an old lady and makes her eat cats, too. While this is going on, you don't know it's a possession, though, you believe that it was just the old lady being bonkers and eating her cats. You find out at the end of chapter 4. Winendophelal throws a temper tantrum at her cousin when he comes back into the picture, she runs away, she goes to see the old lady, and then she herself becomes possessed.
Honestly, if you want to skip the first two chapters all together, just read the back of the book.
The main character answers all questions with a snide remark or another question. Reading [b:Lost|6411961|The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3)|Dan Brown|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1303391374s/6411961.jpg|6600281] is like playing one of those three-dollar PC games where you have to investigate some strange happenings, no one gives you a straight answer, and at the end you find out the bad guy is the person that asked for help in the first place.
I read a lot of bad reviews about the book before I read it. I didn't hear the best things about [b:Wicked|37442|Wicked The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Wicked Years, #1)|Gregory Maguire|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1321029694s/37442.jpg|1479280] before I read it either and I was pleasantly surprised, unfortunately [b:Lost|6411961|The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3)|Dan Brown|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1303391374s/6411961.jpg|6600281] didn't have the same effect on me.
If someone should happen to read it and decide that it is a great book, I would love to speak to this person and get their point of view. I'm almost hoping there was a deeper meaning in there somewhere that I just missed.
Though this was not the best book ever, I'll probably still continue to read [a:Gregory Maguire|7025|Gregory Maguire|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1319068553p2/7025.jpg] books for the twisted fairy-tale fun.
The book itself is beautiful. Gregory Maguire is a fortunate author to get so many of his books illustrated.
The blurb at the back definitely makes it sound really interesting, but once you begin reading it, it's not really about the ghost as it claimed, it's about Winnie, who isn't very fun to read about.
Quite simply, it was boring. The problem is that while this story is about Winnie, we are only made to care about her at the very end, which makes the rest of the book quite boring. By the time you realize it was meant to be about her all along, the book is almost over and it was only starting to get exciting.
On an initial read-through, for the first 4/5th's of the book, everything she does and most of what happens to her is very dull. The very best chapter is the last one since just by itself, it had more excitement than the entire rest of the book, (and it is the only reason why I would have given it 2 stars instead of 1). Looking back on the previous chapters, it makes sense why all of that seemingly pointless content was there, but a book has to be interesting and compelling as you're reading it, not once you're done.