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The Hidden Assassinsby: Robert Wilson |
The Book of Lost Thingsby John ConnollyIf you're looking for a typical murder-mystery book, The Book of Lost Things definitely isn't it. Author John Connolly manages to combine outrageous, yet believable fantasy with horrific murders while he entertains you with a story that holds you in thrall. Mr. Connolly is probably best known for his Charlie Parker series, but The Book of Lost Things provides the weird adventures of a twelve-year-old boy. John Connolly's imagination runs rampant, producing a hilarious twist on certain very familiar fairy stories as well as grim pseudo-reality.The twelve-year-old boy is David, who does everything he can think of to keep his mother alive while she's wasting away from a terminal illness. When she is finally gone, he and his father commiserate for a while, then his father becomes involved with another woman. David resents her, and resents both his father and his step-mother when they marry. He resents them both even more when the step-mother becomes pregnant, and his jealousy over the new brother and all the attention he gets drives him away from both parents, plunging him more and more into the world of books. They move into the step-mother's house, which is larger – and David finds himself in a room with books left by its former occupant, who evidently ran off with a younger sister and was never seen again. The room's former occupant was Jonathan Tulvey, the step-mother's uncle, whom she had never met. The books he left behind also contained stories Jonathan had written; stories distorted by weird circumstances and uncomfortable endings. David becomes enamored of them. The setting is in England, during the Second World War, and although the 'new' house is fifty miles from London, a German plane, blazing from a direct hit by anti-aircraft guns, falls from the sky and lands in the sunken garden, where David happens to be. He crawls into an opening in the side of the garden to escape the flames, and immediately finds himself in a totally different land. The country which David enters is full of unpleasant characters such as The Crooked Man and the Lupes, which are half-wolf, half-human. David meets two kindly characters, one a woodsman and another a knight on a white horse named Roland. Escaping from one near-disaster and immediately going toward another, David slowly realizes that he is changing from a boy to a man, with his viewpoint adjusted accordingly. He is faced with everything from homosexuality to cannibalism, and some very bizarre situations between. The actual Book of Lost Things is held before him as a promise for his safe return to his own country by the King in whose keeping it lies. When at last David's bravery is rewarded, along with his realization that the new wife his father has chosen and his new step-brother are people to cherish instead of to abhor, he's able to return. John Connolly has departed from the Charlie Parker tales only to create an amazing and accurate portrayal of a boy's natural jealousy moving into a more adult point of view. Yet that adult point of view retains, unlike a good many so-called mature people, a very positive knowledge that the supernatural actually exists. Hooray for John Connolly! Alan Paul Curtis |
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