Product Description

The 1980s. Kate Meaney - with her 'Top Secret' notebook and
Mickey her toy monkey - is busy being a junior detective. She observes
goings-on and follows 'suspects' at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping
centre and in her street, where she is friends with the newsagent's son,
Adrian. 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 2004, Adrian's sister Lisa - stuck in a going-nowhere relationship
- is working as a deputy manager at Your Music, a cut-price record store.
Every day she tears her hair out at the horribly bizarre behaviour of her
customers and colleagues. But together with security guard Kurt, she
becomes entranced by the little girl they keep glimpsing on the centre's
CCTV. As their after-hours friendship intensifies, they investigate how
these sightings might be connected to the unsettling history of Green Oaks
itself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6247 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

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

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

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

Customer Reviews

'What Was Lost' Has Found What Recent Novels Have Been Missing...
'What Was Lost' is Catherine O'Flynn's debut award-winning novel, which tells the story of Kate Meaney who mysteriously goes missing in 1984 and the resonance this has when, some twenty years later, she reappears on a CCTV camera in Green Oaks Shopping Centre. The novel considers the butterfly effect of Kate's disappearance on the lives of Kurt, a security guard, and Lisa, a shop manager, who in 2004 find themselves trapped in unfulfilling roles at Green Oaks. This is the stage where the story's drama unfolds and the common denominator between all the characters and sub-stories within the novel - all the losses relate to the shopping centre and the retail future its represents at the expense of a previous way of life.

The novel opens in 1984, with the narrative painting the world through the eyes of child-detective Kate, a lonely ten year old who has lost her place even before her official disappearance. The skill with which O'Flynn depicts the naïve and honest perceptions of childhood and loneliness is highly commendable, and when the story jumps after some sixty pages to 2004, I found myself touched by a personal sense of loss for the character. However, despite my initial reluctance to shift perspectives, the portrayals of Lisa and Kurt proved to be no less absorbing, and it is in this future that one encounters a number of the walk-on roles of customers, whose obstinacies and misfortunes are a joy to read. The book moves rapidly from moments of laugh-out-loud ridicule to lump-in-your-throat compassion, all the while revealing clues to solve the mystery of the lost girl.

Touching base with both humour and heartbreak, often in quick succession, for me the strength of O'Flynn's writing lies in her uncanny ability of perception and the accuracy with which she depicts all the lives in the story. A definite highlight would be the sporadic and unrelated monologues offered by customers who have visited the shopping centre and her poignant portraits of employees or visitors, all of which seem to connect with an essential truth of humanity. On other occasions throughout the novel, O'Flynn explores the idea of speech, with certain scenes comprising entirely of scripted conversation to great effect.

The book has surprising relevance to contemporary current affairs, and the conclusion skilfully wove all the threads of the story together in an unexpected and remarkable resolution. Rarely, if ever, does a book successfully manipulate elements of humour, romance, mystery and ghost-story together in an honest yet enthralling way, yet this is exactly what is achieved in 'What Was Lost'.

Good first novel but nowhere as good as the hype
'Crime was out there. Undetected, unseen. She hoped she wouldn't be too late'.

The story revolves around a little girl who is orphaned and carries on (obsessively) playing detective. The writing in this first part of the book is very engaging and although I found the child's life somewhat unconvincing I was very happy to suspend disbelief and enjoy.

The narrative then moves on twenty years and we take up with minor characters from the first story years later in the shopping centre where she disappeared. There is good writing here too but the book loses its way and as other reviewers have noted you can tell it's a first novel. Other reviewers think the ending was masterful - I thought it weak.

I look forward to further books from Ms O'Flynn as she is clearly a talented writer though for me this novel is structurally flawed.

read it in a day
LOved IT, loved the narration - loved the jokes ( had to stop myself laughing as i was reading it at work)
loved the Quinton and steri refs

presume was based on MErry Hill
well done Catherine!