What Was Lost (O'Flynn)

What Was Lost 
Catherine O'Flynn, 2007
Henry Holt & Co.
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780805088335

Summary
In the 1980s, Kate Meaney—“Top Secret” notebook and toy monkey in tow—is hard at work as a junior detective. Busy trailing “suspects” and carefully observing everything around her at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping mall, she forms an unlikely friendship with Adrian, the son of a local shopkeeper. But when this curious, independent-spirited young girl disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion and is hounded out of his home by the press.

Then, in 2003, Adrian’s sister Lisa—stuck in a dead-end relationship—is working as a manager at Your Music, a discount record store. Every day she tears her hair out at the outrageous behavior of her customers and colleagues. But along with a security guard, Kurt, she becomes entranced by the little girl glimpsed on the mall’s surveillance cameras. As their after-hours friendship intensifies, Lisa and Kurt investigate how these sightings might be connected to the unsettling history of Green Oaks itself. Written with warmth and wit, What Was Lost is a haunting debut from an incredible new talent. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—1970
• Where—Birmingham, England, UK
• Awards—Costa First Novel Award
• Currently—lives in Birmingham, England

Catherine O’Flynn was born in Birmingham, England, in 1970, where she grew up in and around her parents’ candy store.  She has been a teacher, Web editor, and mystery customer—and this, her first novel, draws on her experience of working in record stores. After spending several years in Barcelona, she now lives in Birmingham. (From Barnes & Noble.)

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Book Reviews
What Was Lost is a delight to read—poignant, suspenseful, funny and smart.... [It] is a moving novel, bespeaking not only the energy and inventiveness of its author but also the power of good old realism.
Jane Smiley - Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review

The bravest and most appealing adolescent this side of The Lovely Bones, aspiring detective Kate Meaney vanishes partway through Catherine O’Flynn’s mesmerizing debut novel, What Was Lost.... There are many ways to feel invisible, we learn from this gentle, sharp-sighted tale of love and loneliness.  And there are many ways to be found.
O, Oprah Magazine

Engrossing. . . With a sure hand for both suspense and satire, O’Flynn is a masterful writer, and her book a delicious mash-up of Nancy Drew and High Fidelity—teary and tart in the right proportions.
Marie Claire

(Starred review) Stirring and beautifully crafted, this debut novel recounts how the repercussions of a girl's disappearance can last for decades. In 1984, Kate Meaney is a 10-year-old loner who solves imaginary mysteries and guesses the dark secrets of the shoppers she observes at the Green Oaks mall. Kate's unlikely circle includes her always-present stuffed monkey; 22-year-old Adrian, who works at the candy shop next door; and Kate's classmate, Teresa Stanton, who hides her intelligence behind disruptive behavior. Kate's grandmother has plans for Kate: send her to boarding school. But Kate doesn't want to go. Fast forward to 2003, where it's revealed through Lisa, Adrian's sister, that Kate disappeared nearly 20 years ago, and Adrian, blamed in her disappearance, also vanished. Lisa works at a record store in Green Oaks and is drawn to Kurt, a security guard whose surveillance-camera sightings of a little girl clutching a stuffed monkey hint that he might have ties to Kate's disappearance. Teresa, meanwhile, now a detective, has her own reasons for being haunted by Kate's disappearance. Gripping to the end, the book is both a chilling mystery and a poignant examination of the effects of loss and loneliness.
Publishers Weekly

O'Flynn's debut begins with self-made detective and ten-year-old orphan Kate Meaney as she buses her way to the Green Oaks Shopping Mall, where she'll surveil the various customers who may want to commit crimes: "Crime was out there. Undetected, unseen." With notebook and stuffed monkey in tow, Kate spends her days when not in school either outside the mall looking to catch a thief or at a neighborhood store sharing her observations with the shop owner's son, 22-year-old Adrian Palmer. When Kate disappears one day, never to be seen again, suspicion falls on Adrian, and the two-decade-spanning, unsolved case wreaks destruction on the lives of those who had touched Kate's life in one way or another. This seamlessly written, character-driven novel offers up well-appreciated humor along with its darker material, and readers who enjoy sideswiping surprises will not be disappointed. Recommended for public libraries.
Jyna Scheeren - Library Journal

In 1984, Birmingham, England, is home to Kate Meaney, 10 years old, bright, self-possessed, and so obsessively engaged in the art of detection that she puts Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet to shame. Twenty years later, Kate is just a memory in a very few people's minds—and an obsession to a security guard at a Birmingham "shopping and leisure center." A peer but a stranger to Kate, he knows he saw her the day she disappeared, but, a child himself at the time, he hadn't reported his sighting. Now he sees her on the security cameras in the mall, and his new friend who works at the music store—and who has her own past with Kate—finds the little girl's toy monkey in the employees—only area of the complex. O'Flynn has created an ensemble cast of fully developed and engaging characters—children, adults, and adolescents—and placed them in a plot that twists and turns more than the underground and locked stretches of the mall. And she creates sentences and verbal images that are both finely honed and flawlessly flowing. This is a book with high appeal to mystery and suspense fans, and also to anyone who appreciates fine writing or mesmerizing storytelling. —Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia
School Library Journal

Debut novel, nominated for the Man Booker Prize, is part mystery, part ghost story, and altogether wonderful. The story begins in O'Flynn's hometown, Birmingham, England, in 1984. The heroine is Kate Meaney, ten-year-old private eye. Kate's interest in detective work is rooted in a fondness for film noir she shares with her father. When he dies, her amateur sleuthing helps her remain connected to his memory. Kate is a shy, serious, singular child, and her only friends are eccentrics and outcasts. There's Adrian, the adult son of a local shopkeeper; Teresa, the girl who sets new standards for naughtiness when she transfers to Kate's school; and Mickey, the plush monkey who accompanies her on stakeouts at the local mall. Kate's grandmother—who becomes her guardian when her father dies—wants Kate to go to boarding school, but Kate has other ideas. The narrative shifts to 2003. The mall where Kate followed suspects is still there, but now the action revolves around Kurt, a security guard, and Lisa, an assistant manager at a record store. Neither is happy at work, but these dead—end jobs are just symptoms of a more general malaise and paralysis. Both Kurt and Lisa are immobilized by tragedy, and both become obsessed with a little girl Kurt sees on a security camera one night—a little girl with a plush monkey peeking out of her backpack. This is, ultimately, the story of Kate's disappearance and the people transformed by it. It's also a mordantly funny depiction of the contemporary retail workplace. And it's a romance. These pieces should not fit together, but they do. O'Flynn is able to capture a character or a scene with a few perfect details, and she seems to possess an uncanny, ennobling sympathy for her characters. Heartbreaking, hilarious and immensely rewarding.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. What drove Kate into an imaginary detective world? What sort of heroism does she fantasize about?

2. How was Kate influenced by her father, both before and after his death? How did his approach to parenting compare to her grandmother’s?

3. What makes Green Oaks so appealing to Kate? Why is it important for her to go where no one knows her?

4. How did you react to the shift in point of view after Kate disappeared? How did the adults’ perceptions compare to hers?

5. How does Lisa cope with the aftermath Kate’s isappearance has on her brother and her parents?

6. How would you characterize Kurt and Kurt Sr.? How do the differences between Kurt and his sister, Loretta, affect their roles in the family?

7. Discuss Green Oaks itself and the closed factory that looms in its history. What do shopping and stores such as Your Music bring to the community? How pervasive is mall culture in our society?

8. How did your understanding of Teresa unfold? What had the dynamics between Kate and Teresa been like when they first met? How was Teresa affected by abuse once she reached adulthood?

9. Ultimately, who was responsible for Kate’s death? Could it have been prevented?

10. What is evoked by the top-secret detective notebook entry that forms chapter 41 in the novel? In what way do Kate’s observations in those last scenes bring her story full circle?

11. How would you describe the relationship between Lisa’s co-workers? What do their interactions with each other and with the customers say about their personalities? Why do they stay in their jobs? How does Lisa handle the task of disciplining the volatile Steve in chapter 25? Why did Ian string Mr. Wake along for nearly two years regarding the classical-music cassette (chapter 31)?

12. Discuss the novel’s title and its double meanings. In what way does Kate’s disappearance serve as a metaphor for the other lost souls depicted by Catherine O’Flynn (including the mall generation itself)? How did Lisa and Kurt become lost? Is their apathy indicative of their generation as a whole?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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