Gregory Maguire

Winifred Rudge, a bemused writer struggling to get beyond the runaway success of her mass-market astrology book, travels to London to jump-start her new novel about a woman who is being haunted by the ghost of Jack the Ripper. Upon her arrival, she finds that her stepcousin and old friend John Comestor has disappeared, and a ghostly presence seems to have taken over his home. Is the spirit Winnie's great-great-grandfather, who, family legend claims, was Charles Dickens's childhood inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge? Could it be the ghostly remains of Jack the Ripper? Or a phantasm derived from a more arcane and insidious origin? Winnie begins to investigate and finds herself the unwilling audience for a drama of specters and shades—some from her family's peculiar history and some from her own unvanquished past. In the spirit of A. S. Byatt's Possession, with dark echoing overtones of A Christmas Carol, Lost presents a rich fictional world that will enrapture its readers.

A Novel

Lost

Sarah Sammis

The central thesis of Lost by Gregory Maguire is that people are haunted not by ghosts, but by themselves and their own failures, stresses and worries for the future. For Winifred Rudge her ghosts are a failed marriage, her stalled writing career and her fears of never writing again.

Winifred Rudge, an author of children's fiction, has gone to London to work on an adult novel that has been rattling around in her head for a while. She plans to stay with an old friend but he's gone missing. In his place she finds superstitious builders trying (and failing) to do a quick remodel on the flat.

While Winifred is there she is the flat begins to manifest strange sounds, foul odors and the pattern of a cross with a zigzag through it. All of these events distract Winifred from her writing. Instead of working she works through a number of theories to figure out what is going on with the flat and more importantly what has happened to her missing friend.

Gregory Maguire starts with a well known story and then writes his own. He's best known for Wicked which tries to imagine the back story for the Wicked Witch of the West. For Lost he starts with A Christmas Carol and creates something that is half chick lit and half Gothic horror. Wicked and Lost are very different in style and form. Everything I wished he had done in Wicked he has done in Lost.

I didn't enjoy Wicked because it was too different in tone and setting from Oz as it was described in the Baum books. Oz was Oz in name only and was entirely disappointing to me having read most of the books numerous times. A Christmas Carol is another book I've read dozens of times but this time the link to Lost is thematic only. Instead of trying to write within Dickens's London and Scrooge's circle of acquaintances, Maguire sets the novel in modern-day London with a fictional family purporting to have a link to Charles Dickens and kinship to a man who may have been the inspiration for Scrooge. By using A Christmas Carol as a starting point, rather than a blueprint, Maguire manages to create a suspenseful Gothic horror with a chick lit facade. This book that I expected to hate ended up being one of the best (and scariest) novels I've this year.

Mary Rose Luksha

Lost by Gregory Maguire, I'm sad to say, was a bit of a let down. I've read Wicked, and Confessions... and absolutely loved them. When I found out this wasn't going to be his usual twisting of a fairy tale I was still up for the read, and I liked it. I know a lot of people were confused with the Dickens/ Jack the Ripper business, and I understand where they're coming from; but I also think they need to understand that Maguire will branch out. I was with him the whole way, but the end was such a cop out. I know he's trying to make you question the parapsychology of it all, whether it was in Winnie's head or not, but the ambiguity came off as he couldn't think of a better way to end it, rather than using the ambiguity to make a statement. Not my favorite Maguire, but still a good read.

Emily Perkovich

I’m not sure I can organize my thoughts around this. I feel let down. I love a multi story plot, especially when they all tie back together. I understood the way the connections were made. I enjoyed several of the story lines and how they fit together. Ultimately, there was just too much going on. I was very excited to see how the Jack the Ripper portion would tie in, but for the most part they were just distracting from everything else happening. I hated every time the plot was interrupted to add in the Wendy/John storyline. Not because it was a bad story, but because it felt unnecessary to making the story work. The individual parts were all written well, and I would be willing to read more of Maguire’s work, but this book actually made me feel stressed trying to make all the bits work together properly without overshadowing one another or losing other threads.

Lost A Novel

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