What Was Lost

by Catherine O'Flynn

Paperback, 2008

Status

Checked out

Due 22-11-2023

Call number

823.92

Genres

Publication

Tindal st Pr Ltd (2008), Edition: Main, 272 pages

Description

Fiction. Mystery. HTML: In the 1980s, Kate Meaney is hard at work as a junior detective. Busy trailing "suspects" and carefully observing everything around her at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping mall, she forms an unlikely friendship with Adrian, the son of a local shopkeeper. But when this curious, independent-spirited young girl disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion and is hounded out of his home by the press. Then, in 2003, Adrian's sister Lisa - stuck in a dead-end relationship - is working as a manager at Your Music, a discount record store. Every day she tears her hair out at the outrageous behavior of her customers and colleagues. But along with a security guard, Kurt, she becomes entranced by the little girl glimpsed on the mall's surveillance cameras. As their after-hours friendship intensifies, Lisa and Kurt investigate how these sightings might be connected to the unsettling history of Green Oaks itself..… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50

I have found another new favorite author in Catherine O’Flynn. In her What Was Lost she takes her time and develops her story slowly and the reader is drawn firstly into the life of a 10 year old girl and then into the lives of two disenchanted people who work at the Green Oaks Shopping Centre.

In fact the Green Oaks Shopping Center could be said to be the main character in the book as the story ebbs and flows through the centre’s endless corridors.

The book opens in 1984 and we meet Kate, a little girl who escapes her dreary life by pretending to be a detective. With her stuffed monkey and notebook in tow she is always on the lookout for suspicious behavior and one of her favorite hunting grounds is the new shopping centre, Green Oaks. As she notices someone who behaves suspiciously she is determined to tail him and find out what he is up to.

The book then jumps ahead 20 years and the mall is the working place of Kurt, a security guard and Lisa, an assistant manager of a music store. Late one night as he is watching the CTV screens, Kurt sees a little girl with a notebook and a toy monkey standing outside the bank, and, as she travels the back corridors of the mall, Lisa finds a stuffed money tucked in behind some pipes. As these two get together they first search for a lost little girl, but eventually realize they are experiencing links to the past when a little girl called Kate disappeared

I found What Was Lost a charming yet spooky story, with a unique plot that is made up of both the mystery and ghost story as well as a social commentary on consumerism and the dehumanising effects of these giant shopping malls. People’s reaction to this book appears to be varied, but for me, this was a brilliant, spell bounding read from a very talented writer and I can’t wait to see what she produces next.

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LibraryThing member Jenners26

1984, Birmingham, England. Kate Meaney is the sole proprietor and lead detective for Falcon Investigations (assisted by her top secret assistant Mickey the Monkey, a stuffed animal). If Falcon Investigations had an advertisement, it would read something like this:

FALCON INVESTIGATIONS
Clues found.

Suspects trailed. Crimes detected.
Visit our office equipped with the latest surveillance equipment.

Being only 10 years old and with limited transportation, Kate performs the majority of her detective work at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping center. Virtually ignored by her grandmother (her mother abandoned her when she was small and her beloved father died of a stroke not too long ago), Kate is free to spend hours trailing suspects at Green Oaks and observing the goings on in her neighborhood. One of her few friends is Adrian, the older son of a local shopkeeper and one of the few grown-ups who take Kate seriously. At school, Kate keeps mostly to herself until she befriends Teresa, a new girl who doesn't always do things by the rules either. Unfortunately, this fledgling friendship and Falcon Investigations comes to an abrupt end when Kate disappears without a trace.

Fast forward 20 years and we meet Kurt, a security guard at Green Oaks shopping center. Lonely and adrift in life, Kurt is startled to see a young girl appear on the mall's surveillance cameras after-hours. Yet no trace of the girl is found; she seems to be a figment of Kurt's imagination. Kurt is haunted by the girl and ends up teaming up with Lisa, the assistant manager of the record store in the mall, to figure out who the girl is and what happened to her.

Like Kurt, Lisa is also lonely (despite being in a relationship) and stuck in her life. She is haunted by the disappearance of her brother Adrian, who was suspected of being involved in Kate's disappearance years before and fled home to avoid media scrutiny. Realizing that the girl on the video may be Kate, Lisa teams up with Kurt to conduct their own after-hours investigation in Green Oaks—hoping to solve the mystery of Kate's disappearance and remove the cloud of suspicion from Adrian. Along the way, Lisa and Kurt begin to forge a fragile connection, which is shaken when their investigation begins to bear fruit.

I loved this book! It has the most interesting blend of humor intertwined with sadness. Almost everyone in the book is lost and adrift in their lives except for Kate—who has purpose and drive to spare. O'Flynn does a brilliant job of creating fully realized characters. You get inside the heads of Kate, Kurt and Lisa, and I so enjoyed my time there—even though I often found myself simultaneously laughing and filled with aching sadness for them. Even Green Oaks becomes a character of sorts—becoming a menacing and almost evil presence in the story.

Although there wasn't nearly enough of Kate in the book (and the reason for my not giving it 5 stars ... I guess I want to punish the author for not giving me more of Kate!), I was entranced by this story from the very first page until the last. O'Flynn does a brilliant job of tying everything together in a way that was both satisfying and realistic. It was hard for me to believe this was O'Flynn's first book. She is a true talent (as evidenced by this book winning the Costa First Novel Award), and I await her next book anxiously. Do yourself a favor and read this book! It is filled to the brim with all the good and bad aspects of the human existence. Books like this don't come along very often so don't miss it.

An Excerpt

There were always fresh flowers on these graves, along with stone teddy bears and faded dolls. Among them was the grave of Wayne West, a boy Kate remembered vaguely from Infants One, who had somehow put his head inside a plastic bag and suffocated. Every year he was remembered in prayers at school and in mass, but Kate always wondered if he had really died that way. It seemed such a convenient cautionary tale. Kate was waiting for the day that the teachers would present some blind boy in assembly who had lost his vision when someone had thrown a snowball with a stone in it. The school had already had a talk from a boy with one foot who had lost the other playing on the railway tracks. Kate had a gruesome image of teachers from competing schools bidding for injured children at a local hospital and ascribing a range of childhood misdemeanors to them. "I've got a paraplegic little girl here, ideal for stamping out leaning back on chairs." "How about this almost-blind boy, ideal for carrot promotion."

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LibraryThing member lkernagh

A lost little girl with her detective notebook and toy monkey appears on the CCTV screens of the Green Oaks shopping centre, evoking memories of Kate Meaney, missing for twenty years. Kurt, a security guard with a sleep disorder, and Lisa, a disenchanted deputy manager at Your Music, follow

glimpses of the girl through the centre's endless corridors - a welcome change from dealing with awkward customers, colleagues and the Green Oaks mystery shopper. But as this after-hours friendship grows in intensity, it brings new loss and new longing to light.

Starting in 1984, we meet Kate Meaney, a 10-year old orphan and self-stylized junior Nancy Drew with dreams of owning her own detective agency. Kate lives with her maternal grandmother. Her grandmother expects young Kate to be no more trouble than a flatmate so Kate is pretty much left to her own devices and tends to pass through life unobserved by the people around her. Her friend: 22-year old Adrian who works in his father’s newspaper shop in Kate’s neighborhood. Kate spends her time, when she is not in school, conducting surveillance in the new local shopping mall, Green Oaks. When Kate disappears one day, Adrian is the last person to have seen her and becomes the main suspect. The hounding of the press drives Adrian into hiding from everyone, even his own family.

Fast forward 20 years. Green Oaks is now a much larger shopping complex and the story shifts to Kurt and Lisa, Adrian’s younger sister. As Kurt and Lisa find themselves drawn into the mystery around the girl that appears on the CCTV security screens in the mall’s security room, we delve into their unsatisfying lives, their pasts and slowly unfold the secrets they know. I really like how O’Flynn has given Green Oaks a looming, sinister presence on society and takes the reader into the behind the scenes intricate world of a large shopping mall. The effect of Green Oaks on the characters, the plot and the overall story of Kate Meaney’s disappearance made this part mystery, part ghost story a compelling read for me. While the story tends to stray from its original course, there is a purpose to the straying. What really worked for me is how the story unfolds – slowly, layer by layer – to the surprising conclusion.

For the most part, the story is told through the voices of Kate, Lisa and Kurt. It is more a telling of two stories that merge at the end and is something to keep in mind as you read it. An added element that did not make sense to me until I had finished the book was the inclusion of anonymous first person commentator vignettes (depicted in italics) that would crop up from time to time in the story. While the book starts off with energy and purpose with Kate’s character back in 1984 – no, this is not another Flavia de Luce! - the overall sense of the story is one of loss, loneliness and longing. This is more of a slice of life story – with all its warts – than the mystery that is at its roots. The characters are well drawn, as are the circumstances of their lives and their environment.

For a debut novel, this winner of the Costa First Novel Award is an excellent read and I can honestly say that I will never look at a shopping mall in the same way again.

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LibraryThing member bibliobibuli

It strikes me that several British novels (all by women) seem to be exploring the same territory: Nicola Barker's Darkmans, Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black and now Catherine O'Flynn's What Was Lost are set in post-industrial landscape which is ugly, dehumanised and despairing, and the ghosts of the

past are clawing their way through the fabric of time to meddle with the present.

Catherine O' Flynn sets her novel in a Birmingham shopping mall, Green Oaks (actually the main character in the book) while the ghost in question is that of a ten year-old girl, Kate Meany, who went missing (presumed murdered) back in 1980. She appears one night on the CCTV camera of security guard Kurt, while Lisa (deputy manager of Your Music shop) finds a toy stuffed behind the pipes in a service corridor. The novel unfolds as a kind of whodunnit mystery.

The first section of the book takes place in the year Kate, aged 10, disappeared. The story of little Kate playing at detectives with her stuffed monkey Mickey in tow is charming and Kate and her rebellious friend Theresa are the most fully realised and likable characters in the book. If this first section reads like the start of a children's novel, the story soon moves on to more sinister stuff.

I've always felt that shopping malls despite their surface glitz and glamour have a dark underbelly.

In O'Flynn's novel, Green Oaks ( acts as a giant magnet, drawing in the dispossessed and dissatisfied who mooch around the shops all day with nothing better to do and nowhere better to go. O'Flynn is a careful observer, maybe because she herself has worked in retail and been a mystery-shopper and thus experienced of much she writes about, and she is at her best recording the disembodied voices which themselves float, ghost-like, through the mall.

I used to work in one of the Birmingham-based shops she mentions in the first section - Midland Educational in their toyshop branch, Barnaby's and there was much in the book that took me back to that time. The utter dead-endness of the job, the petty rivalries between the staff, the sheer exhaustion of having to remain on your feet and be polite to people for hours at a time.

What was lost, in the end? A girl's life, sure, but there are other poignant losses along the way - hope, ambition, self-esteem, a sense of direction.

But perhaps other things are gained. Theresa has Kate to thank for her success in life, and the mystery brings together Kurt and Lisa and shakes them out of their ruts. Above all, the novel ends with a sense of painful things finally being resolved.

The novel is very cleverly and neatly plotted, even if it can be argued (as some readers have) that there is a little too much coincidence at the end. Maybe, in that sense, that makes it a good antidote to Darkmans and Anne Enrights The Gathering where we are left with only loose ends in our hands when we try to conclusively solve the central mystery.

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LibraryThing member debs4jc

This book kind of confused me. At first I thought it was a story about a girl who likes to play detective. Sure she had problems since her dad died but her efforts to hone her investigative skill while toting her stuffed monkey around seemed kind of cute. Until the story suddenly did a fast forward

in time and started following the employees of a mall called Green Oaks. One of the security guards seems to see a lost little girl on the security monitors. One of the employees finds a stuffed monkey in the staff corridors. It turns out the little girl who liked to play detective, Kate Meany, suddenly disappeared years ago. The book then turns into an examination of how her disappearance ties in with the Green Oaks mall and the sad lives of the people who work and shop there. Lots of sad, bizarre, and disturbing scenes made this a less than enjoyable read for me. It also didn't seem to flow well in audio form, I don't know if the print book gives you more clues but the sudden shifts in time and narrator where hard to follow in audio. The British accent of the narrator did help establish the setting, and the central mystery kept me listening to the sad ending. If you don't mind a moody tale full of detailed examinations into the futility of people's lives, give this one a try.

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LibraryThing member mrstreme

In What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn, characters experienced many versions of loss – from deaths to missing friends to lost ambitions and broken hearts. Central to this story is Kate Meaney – a precocious girl who fancied herself a junior detective. One day, she turned up missing. Neighbors

and the press blamed Adrian, Kate’s friend, for her disappearance, and he could never shake the community’s suspicions. He ran away, leaving behind his parents and younger sister.

Fast forward 20 years to Kurt and Lisa. Lisa, Adrian’s sister, was the assistant manager of a local music store, and Kurt was a mall security guard who was haunted by the memory of Kate and his deceased wife, Nancy. Lisa and Kurt became friends and then romantically involved, not knowing that Kate’s disappearance would connect them in many ways.

The story of a missing child is never easy to read, and after O’Flynn masterfully showed Kate to her readers, her disappearance made it even harder. Kate was smart, likeable and unforgettable – the kind of girl you root for in a book. You wanted her disappearance to have some closure, despite the sadness.

I can’t say the same for the other characters in this book. O’Flynn was at her best creating Kate – I wished the whole book was Kate’s narrative. The other characters were regular, and their voyage of self-discovery was predictable. Inexplicably, O’Flynn included narratives from anonymous mall shoppers at the end of some chapters, which added nothing to the story.

What Was Lost was the first book by Catherine O’Flynn, and her writing holds a lot of promise. I was not as mesmerized by this novel as other readers, but there were parts of this book that were outstanding. I will definitely read another book by O’Flynn, hoping her future characters spring from that same creative place where she created Kate. It’s there where O’Flynn shines.

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LibraryThing member sarasalted

This was okay. Just that. It started well but became progressively like a Ben Elton sketch. Engaging, but unworthy of the many critical accolades it has garnered.

LibraryThing member coolmama

Katie is a 12 year old detective in the vein of Harriet the Spy. In 1984 Birmingham she hangs out at the newly open shopping center in town, spying on random individuals waiting for her big break. She disapears without a trace.
20 year later a shopping center security center staff sees Katie on the

CCTV monitors.
Beautifully crafted fiction. Themes of damaged people, damaged lives, love and loss, famiies and finding oneself. The miasma of life in this gray, misty, depressed Birmingham. Life just carries on without purpose.
Amazing debut by O'flynn.

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LibraryThing member Fluffyblue

I read this book for an on-line book group, although it's probably something I would have read in due course anyway.

The first part of the book was told from the perspective of a child, Kate Meaney, who saw herself as a detective and spent a lot of time at the local shopping mall. Her mother left

shortly after giving birth, and her elderly father died of a stroke, and so her grandmother came to look after her. Before he died, her father gave her a book on how to be a detective. Kate came across as vulnerable, although she certainly would not have considered herself that. Her character was very sweet and innocent, and although you knew something bad happened to her, it was quite intriguing to find out what that was.

The second part of the book was about people who worked at the mall, some 20 years after Kate disappeared. One was a security guard, the other a duty manager at a record store. Both were disillusioned about life, and eventually are brought together by Kate.

The story was interesting, and for a debut novel was well written.

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LibraryThing member lizhawk

Mired in lethagy, Lisa and Kurt are just going through the motions of living. Kate, a small girl, is the only person in town with purpose it seems. The shopping mall is a character, confusing yet predictable and not malevolent till near the end. How all are entertwined becomes apparent only

gradually as we ever so gradually become aware of a mystery.

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LibraryThing member lriley

Winner of the Costa (formerly Whitbread prize) 1st novel book award Catherine O'Flynn's novel 'What was lost' is very finely plotted--intricately weaving the past and present together around the disappearance in the mid 80's of an 11 year old girl. The book looks at a mid 80's declining

manufacturing/industrial city Birmingham England at its beginning stages of recasting itself into a more modern city of shopping malls and outlets. Young Kate Meaney when she's not at school--is a lonely little girl being brought up by her aging father--her mother having deserted her. She dreams of becoming a young detective. With pen and notebook in hand she is on the prowl for wrongdoers--hanging out around banks and the Green Oak shopping mall on the lookout for suspicious characters. Then her father dies of a stroke and an even older aunt comes to take care of her. Life turns upside down for her but then one day she spots that suspicious character and begins to follow him.

That is the first of four parts. The second part moves us up almost 20 years--begins with a security guard at the mall spotting a young girl on the surveillance cameras. From there the mystery of Kate's disappearance unravels in parallel aong with numerous links between the new characters of Part 2--particularly Kurt the security guard and Lisa a manager of a music store--taking us back into their pasts.

As well this is not just a novel about the mysterious disappearance of a little girl. It is just as much a novel about ordinary lives and the things that people do (work) to survive. O'Flynn has a razor sharp eye for detail and an excellent ear for describing the frustrations of working people at a variety of levels in the working foodchain--and this contrasts quite well with the missing girl thread of her story--helping to give the novel more depth and humor. O'Flynn has no problem juggling larger or smaller themes and fitting them together. A very graceful, well plotted fluid bit of work here. Very enjoyable and I look forward to more from her in the future. Recommended.

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LibraryThing member stonelaura

Catherine O’Flynn’s Costa First Novel Award-winning story, What Was Lost, does an amazing job of giving voice to a wide range of characters struggling to wade through their routine and claustrophobic lives. First we meet ten year-old Kate Meany who, in 1984, is valiantly forging on after the

death of her beloved father, adhering closely to the guidelines of the last book he purchased for her, How To Be a Detective. It is at once heartbreaking and admirable to see how lonely Kate clings to her surveillance routines, including daily excursions to the newly opened Green Oaks Mall. Her only friends are her twenty-two year-old neighbor Adrian, who fully supports Kate’s long-range business plan to open her own detective agency, and schoolmate Teresa, who hides her brilliance behind bored high jinks and classroom distractions. The story abruptly jumps to 2003 and turns both considerably darker and considerably funnier as we meet several characters who work at the mall. Kurt works as a security guard in the mall, a place that his working-class father forbade his family to step foot into. Kurt also lives with a secret about Kate’s disappearance, and the insomnia this causes seems well-suited to his endless nights viewing video monitors of the mall’s cold corridors. Lisa, Adrian’s younger sister, is overqualified in her position as duty manager at a mega music store in the mall. The segments that detail her staff and patron interactions would be depressing were they not so mordantly hysterical. Interspersed throughout this section are italicized snippets that expose us to the frequently bitter and hostile minds of those who work, shop and prowl through the mall. The heartbreaking ending brings together most of the lost and lonely souls whose lives O’Flynn has so artfully constructed with both pathos and biting humor and makes the reader think long afterward about the long-ranging consequences of both physical and emotional loss.

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LibraryThing member akelei

10 year old Kate Meaney disappeared. Some people that work in the Green Oaks shopping mall know more about it than they had told at that time, 20 years ago. Written with tremendous compassion for lonely people that are stuck in crappy jobs and/or marriages.

LibraryThing member Twink

Oh wow - what an amazing little gem this book was! This was O'Flynn's debut novel. She's got a fan here that will be looking for her second.

The novel opens in 1984 and we meet nine year old Kate Meaney. She is a bit of a loner, preferring adults to children her own age. One of her favourite adults

is Adrian, the son of a local shopkeeper. Kate is determined to be a detective. This is the driving force of her days. She carries a notebook and makes observations of all the people and situations she comes across. She has staked out both her neighbourhood and the new mall, Green Oaks. She decides to concentrate her time on Green Oaks. She shares her sleuthing duties with herr little stuffed monkey. Until....she disappears.

O`Flynn's portrayal of this little girl is amazing. Her determination, earnestness, and curious mind are all vividly painted with words. I was somewhat reminded of Christopher - the main character in the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. (Another really good read!)

Fast forward to 2003 at the Green Oaks Mall. It has expanded and is very large now. Kurt works as a security guard on the night shift. One night he inexplicably see a young girl with a stuffed monkey on the security camera. When he searches, she is gone. Lisa, Adrian's sister works at a music store in the mall. Working late one night, she gets lost in the staff only corridors and finds a stuffed monkey lodged down by a pipe.

Lisa and Kurt are both lonely and feel their lives are empty. They meet and their lives become connected by a long missing little girl. The development of the characters of Lisa and Kurt is excellent. As with Kate, you immediately feel a real sense of their lives.

Having worked in retail hell for many years, I found O'Flynn's descriptions of the mall, it's workers and customers to be spot on, very funny at times, but also very sad.

This book is as much about the mystery of what happened to Kate as it is about Karl and Lisa reclaiming their lives.

O'Flynn was listed for many prizes for this debut novel - and rightly so!

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LibraryThing member CatieN

The story is about people who are lost, not things. Kate--a young girl who has been abandoned by her mother, her father is dead, and lives with her grandmother--is basically unsupervised and spends most of her time playing detective and doing surveillance at the local shopping center and hanging

out with the people who run the shops near her home. Kate is a charming girl who is very serious and will break your heart, and she disappears without a trace. Jump ahead 20 years, and the story now is about Kurt and Lisa and the same shopping center and how the "lost" people have affected their lives. It all ties together, but you have to hang around until the end to find out how. The author keeps you guessing. Enjoyed the book very much.

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LibraryThing member isabelx

Mickey had been made from a craft kit called 'Sew your own Charlie Chimp the gangster' given to Kate by an auntie. Charlie had languished along with all of Kate's other soft toys throughout most of her childhood, but when she'd started up the detective agency last year she thought he looked the

part. Charlie Chimp was no good though. Instead he became Mickey the Monkey. Kate would run through the agenda with him each morning and he always travelled with her in the canvas army surplus bag. The waitress brought the order. Kate ate the burger and perused the first Beano of the new year, while Mickey kept a steady eye on some suspicious teenagers below.

A ten-year-old detective haunts the Green Oaks shopping centre, looking for suspicious behaviour and hoping to foil a bank raid. Twenty years after her mysterious disappearance she seems to be haunting the shopping centre again, when security guard Kurt sees her ghost on the security cameras.

It's funny and sad in turns, and the mystery at the heart of the book is gripping. I'm not surprised that it won the Costa first novel award, as I couldn't put it down until I found out what happened to Kate all those years ago.

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LibraryThing member spinsterrevival

I loved this book! There was a sinister feeling throughout the first quarter of the book because just from the back cover you know that this fascinating little girl Kate is going to disappear. The present day stories were more mundane but to me just as appealing as Kate's. As the mystery haunted

all the characters, it also haunted me and days later I'm still thinking about it.

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LibraryThing member BookBully

If you loved "Harriet the Spy" as a child and adored "Case Histories" years later, this is the novel for you. O'Flynn writes with joy and purpose, humor and empathy. The result is a mystery/love story/coming-of-age hybrid that makes for compulsive page-turning.

LibraryThing member lightparade

This is an extraordinarily affecting first novel. Now it may be that I have spent too much of time in shopping centres, or in record shops, or indeed finding myself as an observer of others, but as What Was Lost makes clear, we are all observers now. The only proactive character is the child, Kate

Meaney, and O'Flynn ensures the reader really wants Kate to grow, flourish, and succeed... and then... It's true that the coincidences are piled on a bit, but this is a novel of hyper-realism (no shopping mall - at least in England - is that large) so take it as it comes. When you reach the end, you'll fnid yourself staring slack-jawed into the night.

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LibraryThing member shalulah

An interesting book & a really fast read. I loved the character of Kate, with her 'Harriet the Spy'-esque hobby. The jump from Kate to Lisa & Kurt was disconcerting at first, but I liked their characters & the way the story progressed. I wasn't quite sure how it was going to end until it actually

ended! I would read more of Catherine O'Flynn's books.

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LibraryThing member bowerbird

The first part of the book is seen through the eyes of Kate a rather lonely little girl who tries her hand at being a detective. The adult readers' knowledge of the world will make them very conscious of the dangers which the little girl cannot appreciate.
Her fate is the result of her innocence.

However, it is many years later before we discover what has happened to her. The rather bleak setting of the service areas of a Birmingham shopping mall gives the story a sense of forboding. The style for the first half at least, has just a touch of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

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LibraryThing member nocto

This is another book from the 2007 Booker Prize longlist; but it had already been knocked out by not making the shortlist before I began to read it. I liked it better than a couple of the books that made the shortlist. In fact I liked it quite a lot indeed. It's Catherine O'Flynn's first book and

I'll be looking out for whatever she writes next.
The first section of the book is written from the point of view of ten year old Kate, living in Birmingham in 1984, and spending her time playing private detectives at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping centre. I often like things written from a child's point of view and this was no exception.
The second and longest part of the book goes forward to 2003 but we're still at Green Oaks shopping centre and the central character here is 30ish year old Lisa, duty manager in a record store with a life that's going nowhere fast.
I thought the two stories linked together nicely, there were a few things I find a bit strange but generally the book was very consistent. I can see why quite a few people seemed to think it wasn't really Booker Prize material but it's definitely been one of my favourite reads.

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LibraryThing member mendon

This is an unusual novel for mature readers. It's a mystery, but the plot is secondary to the characterization. Kate is an independent child who aspires to be a detective, and her uneventful stakeouts of suspects at the mall are a hoot. The record store employees and their customers are pretty

entertaining too. Be warned that there are plenty of sad parts mixed in with the humor.

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LibraryThing member elleseven

On the short list and the long list for many prestigious fiction awards, this 2007 Costa First Novel award-winner does not disappoint. This is the story of Kate Meaney, a 10-year-old girl living in Birmingham, England, who turns to her fledgling private investigation business (with partner Mickey

the Monkey) to escape the loneliness she feels after her father dies and vanishes one spring day, never to be seen again.

This is also the story of the aftermath of Kate's disappearance and the impact it has on a number of people: Lisa, whose brother was a suspect in the girl's disappearance and who disappeared himself; Kurt, a security guard at the mall at the center of the action; and Gavin, another mall security guard with a questionable past and odd habits.

What Was Lost is in turn laugh-out-loud funny and deeply bleak. The description of consumer mall culture is spot on. The book is written from several different points of view which does take some time to get used to.

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LibraryThing member tronella

About a missing girl, mostly. But also on what happens to people when they lose important things, like family, ambition, hope. I enjoyed this a lot, and although it's very depressing in places it ends on a hopeful note.

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