What Was Lost

By: Catherine O'Flynn

Narrated by: Catherine Skinner

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.

©2007 Catherine O’Flynn (P)2008 BBC Audiobooks America

Excellent book and the narration enhances it

If you could sum up What Was Lost in three words, what would they be?

Unusual, humorous, gut-wrenching.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

O'Flynn deftly manages the switches between the present day and the past.

What does Catherine Skinner bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Skinner brings the characters to life, especially Kate.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

The last few chapters were stunning. Even though I was afraid I knew what was coming, I didn't expect it to unfold as it did. It was very powerful.

Heartwrenching, Eloquent, Beautiful Story

It is not surprising that "What Was Lost," Ms. O'Flynn's debut novel, was a stand-out among its peers in the year of its release, winning the First Novel Award at the 2007 Costa Book Awards and shortlisted for the overall Costa Book of the Year award. This book was also long-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize AND the Orange Prize for fiction, and again shortlisted for the Guardian first-book award- plus being a BBC Radio 5 Book of the Month...
I say all this because I think readers should know that this book was so well received critically, but somehow, sadly, was either underrated among us normal readers or not really visible to readers when it was released. Because What Was Lost is truly so wonderfully good. It is also beautifully narrated by Catherine Skinner. She brings these characters right to life and puts so much feeling into their stories. It is an incredible skill to be able to portray so many personalities at so many emotional stages, not to mention different ages and genders.
One can read the plot summary here on Audible or on Amazon. It gives you the basic plot but the book is so much more. Beautifully written, it has subtext, it is haunting, and you will want to re-listen to catch what you may have missed the first time around. There is a sad irony in the story of Kate Meany. I read one summary on a blog that said "Kate pretends to be a detective." I can't think of a worse way to characterize this girl! Kate doesn't pretend. To this 10 year old girl, she IS a detective. One must be able to empathize here with the mind of a child- Kate is a precocious but lonely kid who watched American cop shows with her dad when she was little. Right before he died, her dad gave her a book called "How to be a Detective." Well, it soon becomes Kate's bible and a symbol of what she wants to achieve for her father. But as you read, you learn that Kate's surveillance work has such a sweet naïveté that will eventually put her in great danger. If she were pretending...well, she would know if she sensed danger, when to stop.
This book is short but it's not breezy, in my opinion. It will stick with you. There are metaphors to think about. How the past meets the present and how someone's actions or failure to act 20 years ago may have changed things drastically...but was it supposed to be different? Ultimately, the reader is given the chance to think, and that, to me, is what makes a book excellent. I highly recommend What Was Lost. Thank you to the author for writing such a beautiful novel.

Beautiful, Gripping

I loved this book. The texture and detail of the setting and characters worked so perfectly for me. The suspense completely hooked me, and I knew I was the one pulled along by a string, no choice but to follow.

Surprising and Haunting

You "think" you know where this book is headed, but the real shock occurs just short of halfway through the text. Keep going until you hit the middle, and brace yourself for a page turner from that part onward. Clever twist on the mystery genre--with clear writing and narration.

Hmmm

I liked the initial story, but it declines as it progresses. I was glad to have it done.

What was lost? The plot

Maybe this book would work better in print. Read by the excellent Catherine Skinner, it's a dense thicket of atmosphere specializing in urban rubble. There's a plucky girl who aspires to be a detective, soon an orphan and soon missing. Another girl who's a genius with a murderous dad (what happened to her?) is before long neither present nor absent. There's the inevitable patsy friend of the first girl, created to take the blame, and an array of young women. (Nancy? Who's Nancy? What happened to Kate? Oh, there's Kate, an hour later.)

Plot elements start and stop. I couldn't keep track and finally stopped before finishing, realizing that I didn't care what happened. There are murders, so I guess this is a mystery, but clues don't go anywhere and the ending, if it ever ties anything together, has to come out of nowhere.

The narrator is good, especially for aspiring to forward momentum, but frequently, since I'm an American not adept at working-class English accents, I understood her only with great effort.