What Was Lost [Buy Now]
By Catherine O’Flynn
Holt Paperbacks, 256 pages, $14
Working at a mall doesn’t compare to going to one voluntarily. Having to deal with strange customers, egotistical bosses, and flaky coworkers — never mind shelling out a significant portion of your paycheck to eat at the food court on your lunch hour — isn’t worth the slightly above minimum wages.
Catherine O’Flynn, author of What Was Lost, gives a pretty spot-on description of mall life. Green Oaks, the Birmingham shopping center detailed in the novel, is a nightmarish complex, and she gives an accurate insight on how suffocating it may be to work there long after you should have moved on.
The mall is the setting of the story, which begins in 1984 with Kate Meany, a 10-year-old aspiring detective who’s utterly fascinated by the newly-opened Green Oaks. Kate is a social misfit, befriended only by Teresa, the class psycho; Adrian, a 22-year-old who works in the neighborhood; and Mickey, her stuffed monkey. Kate spends as much time at the mall as possible, honing her skills and waiting to pounce on any mischief-makers who may cross her path. With her old soul and innocent imagination, it’s hard not to adore her.
But if you’ve read the synopsis on the back cover, you know things aren’t going to end up well for Kate. Your heart breaks with anticipation as you discover where her charmingly inquisitive personality will lead her. Sympathy for Kate is what keeps the reader going; you’ll want to know what possibly could have occurred to cause the downfall of this lovable little girl.
But before you can find out what’s what, O’Flynn fast forwards 20 years and focuses on the lives of Lisa and Kurt, both employees of Green Oaks. Kate’s sweetness and light, despite having experienced loss and loneliness in her short life, is unpleasantly contrasted by the miserable existences of Lisa and Kurt. Both are pitiful, having dug themselves into wretched holes they can’t get out of. Lisa, a manager at the mall’s record store stuck in a loveless relationship, is Adrian’s sister; he ran away after being accused of involvement in Kate’s disappearance. Meanwhile, Kurt, a nightshift security guard, still hasn’t recovered from the death of the love of his life four years earlier and, the reader eventually learns, is connected to Kate in his own way.
The two are soon brought together by the girl. Kurt begins searching for Kate after seeing her image on a surveillance camera. This leads him to Lisa, who found Mickey in one of Green Oak’s service hallways. The two are determined to unravel the mystery together, but this plotline actually seems to take a backseat to the pair’s self pity and attempts to change their pathetic situations. After one too many chapters learning why Lisa and Kurt’s lives are so disappointing, you’ll begin to wish that O’Flynn will just get on with it and get back to Kate, or at least what happened to her.
What Was Lost is also weirdly interjected by the anonymous thoughts of various customers, loiterers, and other frequenters of the mall. It’s hard to figure out why exactly these passages are necessary, except maybe to show that employees aren’t the only ones unhappy at Green Oaks.
The book eventually ends in a conveniently roundabout fashion, predictable in some ways and slightly surprising (though maybe a little too convenient) in others. What Was Lost won the Costa First Novel Award and O’Flynn’s talent is very apparent. But in her attempts to tell her story in an unusual way, she drops the reader just as she’s hooked them. It’s hard to have sympathy for Lisa and Kurt when you’ve already invested so much in Kate.
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