Lost by Gregory Maguire

I never know what to think of Gregory Maguire's books. They're impossible to classify; are they fantasy, historical, mystery? Fairy tales with a modern twist, or modern stories with a fairy tale twist? And they all ways leave me with an uneasy feeling. "Lost" seemed to me to not have much momentum for much of the book. It picks up after Winnie becomes possessed by a 12th century spirit, but it almost happens too late in the book, so although really facinating, it's almost out of place in the story. I don't think I can recommend this book to any one other than a Gregory Maguire fan.


About the Book

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 stepcousin and old friend John Comestor has disappeared, and a ghostly presence seems to have taken over his home. Is the spirit Winnie's great-great-grandfather, who, family legend claims, was Charles Dickens's childhood inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge? Could it be the ghostly remains of Jack the Ripper? Or a phantasm derived from a more arcane and insidious origin? Winnie begins to investigate and finds herself the unwilling audience for a drama of specters and shades -- some from her family's peculiar history and some from her own unvanquished past.
In the spirit of A. S. Byatt's Possession, with dark echoing overtones of A Christmas Carol, Lost presents a rich fictional world that will enrapture its readers.