If you are anything like me, the subject heading in our catalogue of: shopping centres:fiction for the book What was lost, is not going to send you dashing to the shelves to read this title. However, don’t let this put you off as this is a great book.
The story revolves around a shopping centre called Green Oaks, a rather nasty, but very familiar sounding shopping centre in Britain. The piped musak, and the smells of plastic and fried food from the food hall all but permeate the pages. Around this shopping centre congregate the 3 main characters.
Kate is a rather precocious 9 year old, intent on being a private investigator, who does her best work while observing potential suspects while hanging out at Green Oaks. She is a very likeable character who has a strong presence throughout the novel, even though her story actually takes place a number of years before the main action.
Lisa and Kurt both work at Green Oaks. Lisa works in the music store where she has to put up with loathsome co workers, and Kurt is a security guard with a sleeping problem, who works the night shift. Both are going no where fast, and the shopping centre with its endless corridors, and shoppers wandering aimlessly is fairly symbolic of their lives.
The unsolved mysterious disappearance of Kate some 20 years earlier, comes back to haunt Kurt and Lisa, as they both realise that they have been connected in some way to her going missing.
The author, Catherine O’Flynn, has managed to create with her first novel, a gentle story that is full of suspence. Her characters are quirky and believable and you really want them to solve the mystery of Kate’s disappearance, almost as much as you will want them to escape from the confines of the stiffling, but strangely compelling Green Oaks.
