Lost

by Gregory Maguire

Paperback, 2002

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Genres

Collection

Read

Publication

HarperCollins (2002), Paperback, 368 pages

Description

Fiction. Literature. HTML: "A brilliant, perceptive, and deeply moving fable." �Boston Sunday Globe Publishers Weekly calls Gregory Maguire's Lost "a deftly written, compulsively readable modern-day ghost story." Brilliantly weaving together the literary threads of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, and the Jack the Ripper stories, the bestselling author of The Wicked Years canon creates a captivating fairy tale for the modern world. With Lost, Maguire�who re-imagined a darker, more dangerous Oz, and inspired the creation of the Tony Award-winning Broadway blockbuster Wicked�delivers a haunting tale of shadows and phantoms and things going bump in the night, confirming his reputation as "one of contemporary fiction's most assured myth-makers" (Kirkus Reviews)..… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member sussabmax

I really didn’t like the first half of this book. The main character was kind of whiny, and not appealing at all. I kept reading because I really like Maquire (he wrote Wicked, and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister). About halfway through the book, it suddenly got markedly better, and really

fascinating. It was kind of odd. Overall, I am glad I read it, since the end was so good, but it was hard going for the first half. It was almost like two entirely different books.

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LibraryThing member adpaton

Gregory Maguire has made his name by his sophisticated retelling of childhood classics: Wicked dealt was about the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, while Confessions was the Cinderella story – from the point of view of the ugly stepsister.

Lost purports to deal with Dickens’s A

Christmas Carol, with diversions into Jack the Ripper territory, also featuring a book within a book as heroine Winifred Rudge mentally maps her next novel while at the same time trying to solve to disappearance of her step-cousin.

Family history, ghosts, missing cats, and Ebenezer Scrooge, the book starts slowly and I battled to get into it. Ultimately, the effort – like the opportunity Maguire had to create an entertaining story – was wasted.

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LibraryThing member lycomayflower

The book certainly held my interest (I read about three-quarters of it in one day), but it's ultimately somewhat disappointing. Maguire starts out by setting up a truly creepy ghost story, but it turns out the book is actually a character study. I'm fine with books which defy categorization or

which mix or meld genres (in fact, when they are done well, I love books like that), but in Lost I couldn't help but feel like Maguire cheated by reeling me in with a ghost story and then, when I was well and truly hooked, giving me the literary character novel he wanted to write all along. When a writer pulls a switch like this, disappointment is almost inevitable. I'd have been happy with a straight-up ghost story, and I'd have sat still for the character study from the beginning without being hoodwinked into it. Maguire is good enough to do either; I wish he'd had enough wisdom (or confidence?) to pick one or the other.

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LibraryThing member Genki

I had high expectations for this book after having read Wicked, Son of a Witch, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and Mirror Mirror. I could not get into this book, and made it through the book only because I was determined to finish it.

LibraryThing member atheist_goat

Maguire's books are cool up until a point, and then they stink. This is no exception: I liked it, and it was properly creeping me out, and then there was the Stoopid Plot Development and you could hear the stinking start. Ugh.

LibraryThing member ColieCakes

I cannot read 3 pages of this book without falling asleep. The story has gone nowhere for the majority of the book. I'm giving up now and based on the other reviews, doubt I will be missing a spectacular end.

LibraryThing member sambina8051

I wish someone would have stopped me from reading this. It was NOT his best book. Ugh.

LibraryThing member sszkutak

I have read Wicked and Son of a Witch, both great works by Gregory Maguire, Lost was not that at all. It was slow and boring. I was disappointed. In hopes of another well written tragic story, I received whiny and melodramatic- the main character is annoying.
The story attempted to have the main

character search out the background of Jack the Ripper, and there really wasn't any of that.

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LibraryThing member norabelle414

Definitely not up to par with the rest of Maguire's books.

LibraryThing member Djupstrom

I like Maguires other books like Wicked and Son of a Witch, but this one seemed a bit off the mark. It was a struggle for me to finish.

LibraryThing member redderik

This implies it relates to a charles dickenson's christmas carol, but dissapointingly misleads you. By itself it is still a good story, but the expectation threw me off.

LibraryThing member im-imagined

Certainly not Maguire's best work...but I enjoyed it. Not a patch on 'Wicked' or 'Stepsister' but...interesting, for lack of a better word. Dense and atmospheric - quite suffocating, I thought, at times.

LibraryThing member t1bnotown

I never got particularly into this one- the character spends a lot of time whining about how she's obsessed with her cousin, and we eventually find out she's got all these weird psychological things going on with him and her guilt over the death of the baby she and her husband almost got to adopt.

I really love Maguire's fairy tale reinterpretations, but the Jack the Ripper theme on this one didn't work for me. I just didn't have very much to connect with, and didn't particularly enjoy it.

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LibraryThing member thioviolight

Not bad really, but I think I wasn't reading the book closely enough to enjoy it fully; if I had read it more slowly, I may have appreciated it more. The twists are interesting, and there are surprises 'til the end, but there are some parts that I found too rambling and some points that I was not

quite able to connect to the whole. I did not particularly feel for the main character either. Still, not too bad, but I think I was expecting more out of the book.

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LibraryThing member lindenstein

I'm a huge fan of Maguire's work; I really enjoy the way he takes traditional tales and makes them into something more complicated and different from their normal role. This was not my favorite story, because I was expecting something different. I thought there would be more incorporation of

Scrooge or Jack the Ripper, but they were more like figureheads who were present in name but not in character. I thought that the story was interesting and enjoyed the book for what it was, but I feel that the book's synopsis on the back maybe was the most misleading part of it. I found the Wendy to be very likable, most of the time, and I really felt like I connected with her character and wanted her to win at the end of the story. Overall, I liked the story but would not consider it one of my favorite books of all time.

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LibraryThing member lewispike

I wish I hadn't bought this. I thought Wicked was interesting and bought this and confessions together on that basis. Bleuh, what a mistake.

LibraryThing member invisibleinkling

This one didn't catch me as strongly as Maguire's other books have. It's not bad, but it took me a lot longer to finish. Maybe I'll give it another shot.

LibraryThing member fantasmogirl

Maguire's other books all hold great storylines, excellent character development and great real-to-life attributes within their fantasy worlds. This particular bit of writing did none of those things...it was loose and jumbled, jumped around, carried a shallow plot that never seems to really grab

the reader's attention.

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LibraryThing member Jeyra

A lonely woman chases her own ghosts by chasing the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge. Great psychological novel. Contains some sexual content (not explicit) and language.

LibraryThing member stephanie_M

I LOVED THIS BOOK!! I was enthralled immediately, and could not wait to get back to it, for more! the ending was a little glossed over, though.. and felt unfinished. The haunting was never completely explained, and I wished for more. There were too many characters in the beginning, with a few

brought back at the end (and so much has happened, you may forget who they are.) The lead character was an odd duck, but through her transformations, we hope she became a "full" person, complete with a joyous will to live. I loved it, none-the-less!!

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LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl

When in danger, when in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout.

Lost is a book by the author of Wicked. Maguire cleverly combines fairytales, history and an agile imagination to create stories that are impossible not to keep thinking about, long after the book is finished. Lost uses the story of

Ebeneezer Scrooge as its pillar, to tell the story of Winnie Rudge, a writer who has traveled to London to research her next novel. She arrives to find the relative she planned to stay with missing, his flat occupied by builders and a very creepy haunting. Maguire's talent is in how he combines all the disparate elements of his story into a seamless tale.

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LibraryThing member KristySP

Well, I didn't really "read" this. I stopped about halfway through. Gregory Maguire, what happened? The idea of this book is great--but I just could not get into the story. I found it incoherent and boring. Also the main character, Winifred Rudge, is a total drag.
So disappointed. I should have

just re-read "Wicked."

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LibraryThing member herebedragons

#123, 2006

“Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister” is one of my favorite books of all-time, so I’ve been looking forward to reading this one for a while. Unfortunately, it turned out to be something of a disappointment. The story was interesting, but I found the writing to be uncomfortable to read

(which, probably, was the intention, given the story line, but I did find it particularly enjoyable). Also, the main character is a difficult person whom I find it hard to like, enjoy, or really even care about. I almost cared more about all the people around her, hoping she wouldn’t do anything to harm them. On the whole, it was interesting and I did keep reading, but I can’t say I enjoyed it.

LJ Dicussion

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LibraryThing member Carol420

Lost was interesting in the beginning but it quickly lost any sort of momentum as it progressed. It begins with an eye-catching scene of a car accident that the protagonist Winnie sees and tries to help. Then it quickly moves to an adoption service Forever Families and we briefly meet families both

in the traditional and non-traditional sense who are in the process of trying to adopt. Then we're off to England where Winnie is supposed to meet her step cousin and "friend" John Comestor. But when she arrives, he's nowhere to be seen, the house is being worked on, there's a loud pounding coming from the chimney, no one wants to really talk to Winnie and weird things are happening.

I did not care for this novel. It was interesting in the beginning but it quickly lost any sort of momentum as it progressed. I was halfway through this book before I got fed up with the fact that there is no focus for where the story is going. It seems like Maguire had a sudden, great idea for a story and then lost steam and interest as it went along. I enjoyed "Wicked" and "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" immensely, but this was just awful.

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LibraryThing member joeydag

Very atmospheric ghost story

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