Lost and Found – Brooke Davis
This was our latest book club selection. There has been heaps of publicity – here and here and here. This novel is set in Western Australia and it is always quite nice to read something set in your home town plus it had reading group questions (that should help with the discussion).
Here is the blurb …
Millie Bird (aka Captain Funeral), seven-years old and ever hopeful, always wears red gumboots to match her red, curly hair. Her struggling mother leaves Millie in a local department store and never returns.
Agatha Pantha, eighty-two, has not left her house – or spoken to another human being – since she was widowed seven years ago. She fills the silences by yelling at passers by, watching loud static on the TV and maintaining a strict daily schedule. Karl the Touch Typist, eighty-seven, once used his fingers to type out love notes on his wife’s skin. Now he types his words out into the air as he speaks. Karl is moved into a nursing home but in a moment of clarity and joy, he escapes. A series of events binds the three together on a road trip that takes them from the south coast of WA to Kalgoorlie and along the Nullarbor to the edge of the continent. Millie wants to find her mum. Karl wants to find out how to be a man. And Agatha just wants everything to go back to how it was. They will discover that old age is not the same as death, that the young can be wise, and that letting yourself experience sadness just might be the key to life.
This was reasonably easy to read – although I did struggle to get to the end (I suspect that says more about me than the book). There are three main characters; Millie, Agatha and Karl and we hear from each of them in the telling of this story. I preferred Agatha and Karl to Millie – who seemed a bit consciously naive to me – and who wouldn’t like Agatha’s inappropriate shouting? There is quite a bit of death mentioned – all three characters have lost someone significant – so possibly not for the recently bereaved.
Another review …
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2378731/books-brooke-davis-lost-found/