by John Connolly
p. 2006
In World War II era rural Britain, young David, struggling
to make sense of the premature loss of his mother to a wasting illness and the
rapidly-altered structure of his family, stumbles upon another world, one
parallel to but inconceivably darker than his own. This fantastical landscape
of corrupted fairy tales provides the boy with the means to step into
adulthood, but not without cost.
John Connolly’s The Book
of Lost Things visits all the familiar fairy tales—and some unfamiliar ones—but
they are not the Disney-saturated family friendly tales popularized by American
audiences; this is because John Connolly’s The
Book of Lost Things is not a
fairy tale for children. Though the hero is but twelve years old and its coming
of age themes follow the classic paths of any otherworldly adventure novel,
this fairy tale for adults dances around themes much closer to the original
Grimm style than anything animated and slapped on a screen with celebrity
voices.
I found it difficult to like David at first, as he is a rather
selfish and stubborn child, but such is the case in the traditional coming of
age tale. I can’t say that the David who emerges by novel’s end will become a
cherished favorite in my arsenal of beloved characters, but there’s no denying
that he is more mature, for all that
he’s been through, and it softens his earlier nastiness considerably. The
reason David gets a pass early on is because the adventures he goes through are
so immeasurably dark and he doesn’t fall apart when faced with them. Coincidentally
this is also the reason why David will never be a favorite—because I kept
wondering time and again when this kid would crumble under the enormous burden
of his ‘adventure’ and it was almost inconceivable that a child so young could
manage it without losing his mind (then again, maybe he did...).
The moody, bleak presence of The Book of Lost Things is what drew me in to the story. I didn’t
really know what to expect from this book, but it was definitely not the
tainted fairy tales I found. David meets the woodsman while running from
wolves, but in the fantasy world they are called Loups, and are the product of human
girls and wolves, the former playing
part of seductress to the latter in a
bizarrely sexual twist to Little Red Riding Hood. The boy later happens upon
Snow White and her bevy of dwarves, but is surprised to find that it was the dwarves who attempted to rid the world
of the no-longer-fair maiden, and who are now enslaved to her detestable whims.
A white knight on a quest takes David under his wing, but his motives and the
object of his quest are not what you would expect.
Creeping up on David at every turn is ‘the Crooked Man,’
Connolly’s take on Rumpelstiltskin, a devilish figure that stalked David before
his descent into this unknowable land and now wants something from him to
fulfill his own unseen motives. The woodsman, the white knight, the Crooked Man—all
play the part of David’s father figure at various stages in his development, just
as the terrible and imposing female villains in David’s fantasy world represent
aspects of his dual motherly relationships—his longing for his deceased beloved mother and his complicated tension with his beleaguered stepmother Rose. Central to the novel’s
themes are David’s acceptance of change and the imperfect human nature of his
parents.
As I understand it, The
Book of Lost Things is a departure from Connolly’s regular style of
writing, but you can tell it was a very special project for him. Despite his
tendency to dip into cliches, Connolly was obviously interested in the topic of
traditional fairy tales and presenting his own brooding spin on them. The final
150 pages of my edition were actually his in-depth research into the topic, and
a collection of the versions of fairy tales Connolly lifted his ideas from.
If my hints as to the dark direction of this novel weren’t
enough, I feel it’s worth offering this final warning, though I will try to be
vague: there are not very many happy endings in this book. It is not all
depressing either, but it is far from ideal. Like life, there are ups and downs
and if summed up in a few lines, the downs can seem overwhelming, but—like life—you
take from this book what you can and hope it gives you some insight on yourself
for the journey through the woods.
