The book continues with David’s mother’s funeral, and then how David and his father go on with life. Within the first few pages of the novel, I was reminded of three things that I have done in my life when a loved one was sick or dying, and that association is what helped make this novel so touching, and had me tearing up before the first chapter was done. But what I really want to talk about is David, and how losing his mother becomes not merely a plot device or a symbol, but a heart-wrenching part of this boy’s life and how it affects him. And so much of this is true for David, the boy in this novel. I could talk at length about how mothers are so often absent in fairy tales so that the hero or heroine has a space to grow into, so that they must become their own guiding force in life. And it is an achingly beautiful and sad story. (I should note here that since I’m consulting a large print edition, my pagination will be different than any other version of the book.) And this line sets the tone for much of the rest of the story. The Book of Lost Things opens with the line “Once upon a time-for that is how all stories should begin-there was a boy who lost his mother” (9). When I asked her which story it retold, she replied “Oh, everything.” I first heard about The Book of Lost Things from a friend who wrote her thesis on retold fairy tales.
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