What Was Lost [Paperback]

'An exceptional, polyphonic novel of urban disaffection, written
with humour and pathos'

'A superb, haunting novel from a new literary talent'

'Skewers our consumer society in all its absurdity and terrible
sadness. A great debut novel from an awesomely talented writer'

'Inventive and humorous, O'Flynn saves her best lines for the more
monstrous members of the retail trade'

'O'Flynn deftly combines humour, love, loss and grief.
Contemporary literary prose at its finest, surely has book prize potential'

It is the 1980s, and Kate Meaney is a serious-minded and curious young girl - who spends her time with her toy monkey acting out the role of a junior detective. She notes goings-on at the Green Oaks shopping centre and in her street, particularly the newsagent's where she is friends with the owner's son Adrian. When she disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion and is hounded by the press. It's 2004 and thirty-something Lisa is at work in a cut-price record store, tearing her hair out at customers' bizarre requests and the even more bizarre behaviour of her colleagues. While at home, the futility of her relationship is slowly becoming apparent. Over shared fishpaste sandwiches, she strikes up a friendship with security guard Kurt - and, following CCTV glimpses of Kate, they become entranced by the lost little girl and her connections with the strange history of Green Oaks itself.

Longlisted for the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction

Catherine O'Flynn was born in Birmingham in 1970, where she grew
up in and around her parents' sweet shop. She has been a teacher, web
editor, mystery customer and postwoman - and her first novel draws on her
experience of working in record stores. (As the Literary Review observes,
`O'Flynn is just the colleague you'd want to be stuck with in a dead-end
job.') After a few years in Barcelona, she now lives in Birmingham.