"Once upon a time - for that is how all stories should begin - there was a boy who lost his mother. He had, in truth, been losing her for a very long time. The disease that was killing her was a creeping, cowardly thing, a sickness that ate her away from the inside, slowly consuming the light within so that her eyes grew a little less bright each passing day, and her skin a little more pale."

                      That is the beginning of The Book of lost things, a fictional novel written by John Connolly, who is better know for his criminal novels, although in my opinion, he should be writing more fiction/fantasy, because he does it really well. I really got caught up in the plot and finished the book in about two days.

            The story takes place in England during the Second World War and tells the tale of a twelve-year-old boy named David, how he loses his mother, despite all his efforts to stop the sickness from taking her away. He has "rituals", for example touching the handles of the doors an even amount of times, to contribute to his mother's survival. But she passes away still, and David feels like life has cheated him, he did all his rituals, but still his mother was taken away from him.

A few months passes on, and then he starts to hear the books on his shelves whispering to him, mostly he doesn't understand what they are saying, so he ignores them. About the same time, his father takes him to see Mr. Moberley, a psychiatrist whose books speak v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, as if the person they were speaking to was very dumb. His father has also met a new woman, Rose, that David doesn't really get along with, because he thinks that she shouldn't try to be so maternal towards him. In due time, Rose and David's father gets married and Rose gives birth to David's little brother Georgie. And at the same time, the Crooked Man makes his entrance in David's life, with his mocking smile and enigmatic words: "Welcome, Your Majesty. All hail the new King."

            One night when David is out in the garden, a plane crashes down, but luckily he manages to squeeze through a whole in the garden wall, to a part known as "the sunken garden". When he comes out on the other side, he no longer finds himself in England, but in a land created by his imagination, yet frighteningly real. He encounters man-like wolfs called Loupes, Harpies and a lot of other imaginary creatures. There is also "parodies" of classic fairy tales, for example the Loupes is the offspring of a girl wearing a red cape and a wolf she encountered in the forest while she was in her way to visit her grandma. Snow White is pictured as a demanding, very large woman with quite a temper; the dwarfs on the other hand, are fighting the oppression of capitalists (although you never really get to know exactly who the capitalists are...). On his journey through the strange land, he also comes across Roland, a knight who is searching for his friend Raphael and a huntress who fuses together the body of animals with the heads of humans, just to make them more of a challenge to hunt. The reason for this whole, long journey is to see the King, who apparently has a book that maybe can help David get home; The Book of Lost Things...

             But anyway, I shouldn't rewrite the book, which I feel like I'm almost doing here, but it is honestly one of the best books I've read, I've been laughing and crying, and I felt quite empty when I finished it, but I will certainly read it again! I think that there is more to this book than first meets the eye, it is not just only a book you read just for fun, it also has a very interesting psychological perspective on some things, for example obsessive-compulsive disorder and grief.  I strongly recommend this book to anyone who has a sense of humour and likes to drift off from reality sometimes.

                                            "...And all that was lost was found again..."