A review by ceallaighsbooks
Lost by Gregory Maguire

challenging dark emotional funny lighthearted mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A

5.0

“Well, I’ll tell you, some days,” she said, and she began to laugh, “being haunted would seem a mighty relief. I mean, what better to take your mind off your own troubles than to be faced fair and square by a being so very aggrieved that it decides to hang on in the afterlife? Might help you remember how to count your blessings, if you needed reminding on how to do it.”

This is my second book that I’ve read by Gregory Maguire (my first was Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker, his Nutcracker retelling) and I loved this one even more because I thought the MC was particularly relatable and the modern setting of this story I think really enabled Maguire to bring out the best of his writing style and his remarkable insight into the human soul.

When reading this book, it’s best not to think of it as a *retelling* of A Christmas Carol but as a reimagining of the main themes—especially those surrounding reckonings with ghosts of past selves, social isolation, and a distorted sense of time—as well as a tribute to Victorian ghost story formulae. For example, the main struggle that the MC was facing was less one of material avarice and rather of facing the truth of who you are, what your past actions and choices have made you, and how to “move forward with the brokenness” (to quote The Starless Sea 😁) which I thought was an interesting and more universal exploration of the main theme of the original story.

I also just *loved* the MC. I found her so relatable and so empathetic. I related a lot to the fact that she thinks like a writer, that she dissociates from her surroundings, how she handles the pain and guilt she feels over her past actions and choices, her tendency towards paranoia, and by the end I was just sobbing for the absolute beauty and depth of her character. (Bonus points for her being a middle-aged woman too!)

“I just really, really resent being accused of madness if I have nothing productive to show for it, okay?”

Also I just wanted to say that while you’re reading this story, and if at first you’re thinking that some of the decisions vis a vis plot seem random or carelessly disconnected, take a minute to think about how the pieces could be fit into the larger puzzle because I had this thought about a hundred times and as soon as I just paused and tried to figure out what the author may have intended I discovered that the decisions were almost always just an extra layer of clever and subtle that I had completely missed at first. Everything in this story really is just brilliantly connected and relevant.

Another thing that helped me truly appreciate this read a lot more was that I was reading it alongside a reread of A Christmas Carol with a very academic-minded bookclub and was getting a lot of analytical information about the original story in terms of the themes and motifs etc that I would not have picked up on by myself. Perhaps get yourself an annotated edition of Dicken’s story to give yourself that extra level of interpretation that really makes this such an outstanding retelling.

“That’s the definition of being not haunted, by the way: being able to live in the moment without having either to lust for the future or to dread it.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

TW // mental illness, depression, dissociative disorder, suicidal behavior, international adoption, adoption, loss of a child, social anxiety, social isolation

Further / Suggested / Similar Reading…
- A Christmas Carol Norton critical edition , by Charles Dickens
- Alice in Wonderland: A Norton Critical Edition and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll
- The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, by Hallie Rubenhold—the only Jack the Ripper related book I would probably ever read *and* y’all should know that his victims *weren’t* prostitutes since it’s mentioned that they were like a million times in GM’s book 😅
- Gingerbread, by Helen Oyeyemi—similar writing style... and Hurricane Gretl 🥰
- also Our Tragic Universe, by Scarlett Thomas for the themes and the writer MCs