Lost

Lost

Author: Gregory Maguire

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reviewer: Cheryl

Winifred Rudge is an author and the great great granddaughter of Ozias Rudge, a man rumored to be the inspiration for Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge.  In search of a story for her next book, Winnie has been researching the international adoption process, but succumbs to the lure of a story idea that has been haunting her lately.  The main character of this budding story is also an author, Wendy Pritzke, who travels to London following her obsession with Jack the Ripper.  Since Winnie doesn’t know where Wendy’s story will lead, it holds a strange fascination for her.

Winnie travels to London herself, hoping to stay with her previously amiable step-cousin in Ozias Rudge’s old house.  When she arrives, however, she finds the place empty, under construction, and apparently haunted.  The mystery of her cousin’s whereabouts, who or what is haunting Rudge House, and where Wendy’s story is going swirl together into a unified tale in which Winnie must face darker secrets than she anticipated.

Lost is the kind of story that gradually sneaks up on you, revealing elements of the main character’s psychology and history as the mystery progresses.  The book is appropriately disturbing and sad in all the right places as befits Winnie’s predicament.  Maguire, best known for authoring Wicked, the novel that inspired the musical, elegantly blends reality with the supernatural.  Although this was not my favorite of his novels for adults, it was the one I read first and the one that hooked me on his special style of exploring the frailties of human nature through reimagining classic tales.  This is not a traditional ghost story, but readers should find it haunting just the same.