About this title: Winifred Rudge, a bemused writer struggling to get beyond the runaway success of her mass-market astrology book, travels to London to jump-start her new novel about a woman who is being haunted by the ghost of Jack the Ripper. Upon her arrival, she finds that her step-cousin and old friend John Comestor has disappeared, and a ghostly presence ...
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Description: Very Good. 0060988649 light shelf wear / edge wear cover / pages very good condition//"Buy with Confidence-Satisfaction Guaranteed! Customer Service Makes All the Difference. " read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780060988647ISBN:0060988649
Description: Good. Used item may show library stamps, stickers and marks. Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Description: Very good. Appearance of only slight previous use. Cover and binding show a little wear. All pages are undamaged with potentially only a few, small markings. Help save a tree. Buy all your used books from Green Earth Books. Read. Recycle and Reuse! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: New. Clean, tight, unread copy, just has lite shelf wear-We ship out fast daily w/FREE tracking on this item-(Gotta have it fast? ) Expediated shipping is available on this item (Personalized Service~Always Bubble Envelope~ Expediated moves you to front of the line) read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Date Published: 9/17/2002
ISBN-13:9780060988647ISBN:0060988649
Description: New. 0060988649 Brand New Book With Remainder Mark. May Have Slight Shelf Wear. In-Stock Now For Immediate Secure Packaging & Delivery. read more
"Initially, I fell into the trap of expecting that this book should be judged against the only other Gregory Maguire novel I (and many others) have read - "Wicked". If and when you are able to separate this work from Maguire's most popular - it is still a disappointment. At 368 pages, this book is about 300 pages to long. Condensed, "Lost" would be a great short story - the perfect basis for an excellent episode of "The Twilight Zone" , but not worth the time and effort the author gives to an unsucessful attempt at deeply developing his characters."
"This book worked and didn't work. The first half of the book spooked me out. I was afraid to read alone at night, and any noise or movement could make me jump. Then it stopped being so magical and the mood was broken. The main character, Winnie, starts to unwind about half way through the book and I lost touch with her and began to have a distaste for her. But as the onion layers begin to unfold, the last bit of the book where all the truths are revealed had me captivated.
I really like the idea that Maguire proposes that in some ways we are all haunted by ghosts of our pasts, present and future. I only wish there was a better ending than what seemed like deus ex machina to me with Winnie's recovery from her haunting. It gives us the ending we want, but reveals nothing to why the transformation takes place."
"I found the first 50-100 pages to be full of pluck, promise, and possibility. I thought that McGuire was winding up and about to deliver a knock out punch of pleasurable reading.
By the middle of the book, however, I felt that instead of the main character, the author was going through a form of possession himself. He seemed to have become a writer without a plan.
Now having completed reading the book(finally), I am left with feelings of disappointment, disillusionment, and disfavor. I have never felt endings to be one of Maguire's strong points. They have always seemed to me to be weak and pasted together too quickly. But even so, if the middle of the novel is strong enough, a weak ending is easily forgivable. In his other books, such is the case.
In "Lost", however, I think that the title tells it all. There was no sense of direction and virtually no one to really identify with, giving the reader a feeling of floating around, with no one in charge. Though he could get away with some of this in the other books he had written, maybe (judging from his most recent efforts) he had learned from "Lost" that when feeling as though he is losing the way, he should return to following the yellow brick road."
"Winnie Rudge starts off with nothing more than the intention to write her novel, only to be propelled into a story that takes on a life of its own. Is Winnie Rudge on to something real and mysterious or is it just a story in her head waiting to be written?
Winnie is a tough protagonist to like... and maybe it's not the reader's task to like her. I stayed by Winnie's side, rather reluctantly, throughout the story trying to figure out what was happening. Even after finishing the book, I am still not sure what happened. Or how I was supposed to feel about it all.
The story took so many turns, intertwining so many characters, set in locations with so much detail that I felt more lost and overwhelmed than informed, which I assume was the intentional goal of so much information.
Gregory Maguire, hands down, writes amazing tales. Interpretations of what a person thinks they know the story to be. I loved Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and to some extent, Mirror Mirror. The Wizard of Oz, Cinderella, and Snow White took on lives that were far more interesting than the fairy tale variety.
However, Lost takes on more of the style I didn't enjoy as much that was used in Son of a Witch, but even that story was closer to Wicked than not. I prefer the fantasy world that Maguire invents for a story set in another world or far off reality. Lost is too present day that the story seems more like modern craziness.
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