John Connolly, in addition to writing very entertaining mystery novels, also writes brilliantly good, dark, edgy fantasy. Today I'm going to tell you why you should go and read his novel, The Book of Lost Things.
The Book of Lost Things is everything a modern fairytale should be. Its main character, David, is a young boy who is neither insipidly precocious nor idiotically naive. He is smart, introverted, and suffers from an abruptly destroyed family when his mother dies from illness. When his father remarries and has the audacity to have another son with the new wife, David escapes into the fantasy of books and an unkempt, sunken garden in the back of the house his father moves them into.
What follows is an adventure worthy of the Grimm Brothers, as David is transported into a fairyworld that takes every expectation you might have and turns it on its ear. Connolly cunningly takes basic fairytale tropes and twists them unexpectedly at the very last minute, leaving you on your toes through the whole novel. The combination of that vein of familiriaty coupled with Connolly's own imagination means that the ending, while somewhat predictable, is still profound and will leave you thoroughly satisfied.
The Book of Lost Things has several winning components: an endearing, likeable, and realistic main character, a frightening and sadistic villain, and an engaging story. I'm about to start Connolly's book of short fiction, Nocturnes, and I'll let you know how that is posthaste.
1 comment:
Your presentation of John Connolly's Fairy Tales is very passionating and fascinating too. I'll try to find its translaction into Italian Language(if it has been already done). I might also read it in its original written language, but it's both easier for me to find e to read it in to my mother language. I would like to invite you to visit my blog and take a look to my works. I fear that a graduate as you are might find them too naive o not interesting but I will take the risk. Have a nice good by from Italy and by albix
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