The Book of Lost Things: Amazon.co.uk: John Connolly: Books

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Review
"* 'Seldom has a thriller writer been so adept at turning the screw yet further and evoking a sense of awful dread among his landscapes and tormented characters. Colourful but visceral grand guignol, and definitely not to be read at night.' - Maxim Jakubowski, Guardian on The Black Angel * 'Connolly has made a name for himself specialising in darkness, and THE BLACK ANGEL is no exception. Five Star.' - Daily Mirror on The Black Angel * 'Connolly has virtually no match when it comes to chilling his readers.' - Daily Express on The Black Angel * 'There is a precision to the horrors... that make them one of the few sequences to have found anything interesting to say about serial killers since Thomas Harris.' - Independent on The Black Angel"

Product Description
'Once upon a time, there was a boy who lost his mother !' As twelve-year-old David takes refuge from his grief in the myths and fairytales so beloved of his dead mother, he finds the real world and the fantasy world begin to blend. That is when bad things start to happen. That is when the Crooked Man comes. And David is violently propelled into a land populated by heroes, wolves and monsters in his quest to find the legendary Book of Lost Things.

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77 Reviews

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
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4.0 out of 5 stars (77 customer reviews)

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28 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars everything the brothers grimm film wasn't, 15 Sep 2006

By	peacekeeper - See all my reviews

Once again this author has hit the mark of great story telling. This is a story of a young boy(David) who loses his mother and has to adjust to life without her. His father eventually re-marries and they are soon joined by a new half brother. David, feeling left out retreats into a world of books and stories.
When they all move into his stepmothers house, things become rather strange.
David finds a hole in the garden wall which transports him to a magical fairy tale like land of werewolves,trolls and the evil crooked man.

I don't want to divulge too much of the plot, so I'll just say that this story is a fantastic mix of fairy tale and horror. Much like the Brothers Grimm film, this story contains a collection of the famous fairy tales all coming together in the fast paced adventure. That is the only similarity as 'The Book of Lost Things'was a far supperior story.
Not knowing the premise of this book, I thought it would be another action/thriller type book like his others. I have enjoyed all of J.C.'s books, but this one has been the most amazing story yet. It may have been very different to the Charlie Parker books, but it still shared the same dark tone that all his books follow.
This was one of those books I had a hard time putting down.

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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups, 30 April 2007

By	OEJ (England) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Book of Lost Things (Paperback)

In this stand-alone novel Connolly has adapted or taken extracts from a number of classical fairy tales to create one story, which in common with The Chronicles of Narnia takes place in Second World War England and involves a secret portal to a magical mystery land with battles of its own being fought and involving half-human, half-animal hybrids. While on the one hand it's tempting to suggest that this is purely an indulgence on the author's part, there's no denying that it's well written and the imagery and atmosphere he creates - so often a Connolly strength - is probably his best to date because he has given himself free rein to fantasise as much as he wants to.

In my own paperback copy, an unusual supplement to an already unusual book includes an `interview' with Connolly in which he is asked such questions as why he wrote the tale at all. I won't spoil things here, but I do find it curious that the novelist finds a need to justify the writing of a story and to publish those reasons in the book itself. Not that it matters, it takes a little while adjusting to the nature of the story after the very different style of the Charlie `Bird' Parker series but once the reader becomes familiar with it, it makes for entertaining reading. Despite its fairy-tale underpinnings, however, this is not a story for young children; there is no bad language at any time but some of the violence, while pretty tame compared to traditional Connolly fare, would make for an uncomfortable bedtime story for your seven-year-old daughter! But at least Connolly has eradicated the gun from one of his novels as a means of killing; he has always delved into the supernatural world even when writing modern day crime fiction, but in the past even some of the ghosts he created killed with pistols or rifles, which I found at odds with the theme. Not in this book, though. Central character David has nothing more sophisticated than a sword at his side and this is perfectly in keeping with the strange world he inhabits for much of this tale.

Another frequent idiosyncrasy throughout several of Connolly's novels is to give the bad guy a title of some kind, in TBOLT he's The Crooked Man who is very loosely adapted from the Brothers Grimm's dwarf creation Rumpelstiltskin. And with central character David having a conversation with a woman who turns out to be dead, we are reminded once again that there are more similarities to the Bird series than initially meets the eye. Still left-field by most reckonings, and certainly not crime fiction, it's an adult fairy tale that will satisfy existing Connolly fans and for those of you lucky enough not to know, there's a wonderful series of novels by the same author that you really should try if you want a credible mixture of contemporary fiction and the supernatural.

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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fantasy Adventure, 14 Feb 2007

By	H. Ashford "hashford" (Sheffield, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a lovely book. It takes teenager David on an adventure through a fantasy world and a journey along the path from childhood to adulthood. In some ways it reads like a reworking of Wizard of Oz, except that the different aspects of David's personality are integrated in one person (unlike Dorothy's, which appear externally - in the scarecrow, the lion and the tin man). All the same, David has to develop and learn to use cunning/brains (when he solves the riddle of the two bridges), strength and courage (when he defeats the monster in the village), and, hardest of all, love for his step family, before he can defeat his enemies and return home. There are references to various fairy tales and nursery rhymes - some of them twisted and quite dark.

I've marked it down to 4 stars because, for me at least, it reads like teen fiction - it's basically a thriller given a fantasy setting and a little bit of a message - and this book doesn't match up to the best of fantasy fiction (eg the Narnia books, or Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials Trilogy). The material is rich enough to carry so much more. For instance we could have been asked to question (just a little) our notions of right and wrong - ie is it always "good" to kill our enemies? Without wanting to give the end away, it would have been nice to have been left with a question mark over whether the ending was really "morally right".

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars As usual john connolly has exceeded himself
As usual john connolly has exceeded himself with the book of lost things, he is an author of the 21st century, he grips you from start to finish with his excellent writting. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Mrs. A. Oxley

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun
This book was fun. I liked the author's take on the fairytales I read as a child. They become very dark, and in some places very funny. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Kirsty B

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down
I wasn't really sure what to expect from John Connolly's "Book of Lost Things". What little information I had read about the title suggested that it was something of a child's... Read more

Published 4 months ago by xenofan

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic!
This is a remarkable story which explores the many stepping stones that one child must encounter. Jealousy, hatred, love, loss and courage. Read more

Published 6 months ago by Lesley-anne Murray

5.0 out of 5 stars LOVED IT!
This has to be the best book I have read in a long time. An daring read which was impossible to put down. Read more

Published 7 months ago by Jala sufian

5.0 out of 5 stars Fairytales for the wicked....
It takes a little getting into but once it does you find it hard to put down. Very chilling in places (depending on how much you let your imagination run with this one) I found... Read more

Published 8 months ago by Ms. C. Graham

3.0 out of 5 stars The Book of The Lost 150 Pages!!!
David mourns the loss of his mother, doesn't get on with the step-mother and resents the new baby. Engrossed in his books of fairytales he is eventually transported to a mythical... Read more

Published 10 months ago by Mr. John Frank Herbert

1.0 out of 5 stars i couldn't finish it
way too creepy. fantastical is good but this is just a series of ugly spoofs on childhood fairytales. Read more

Published 10 months ago by Sitaraa

5.0 out of 5 stars A cracking read!
Minor spoilers here!
I've just finished reading this again in preparation for discussion at our next book club meeting. Read more

Published 11 months ago by A. Peacock

3.0 out of 5 stars Book of pretty good
I bought this on a whim when i was desperate to read something and the cover and blurb sold me. It does have a stunning cover, kudos due to the designers. Read more

Published 11 months ago by Grr

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