January 1st 2007
£8.99
256 pages
B-Format Paperback
ISBN
978 0 9551384 1

Prizes

  • WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST BOOK AWARD 2007
  • WINNER OF WATERSTONE’S NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR BRITISH BOOK AWARDS 2008
  • SHORTLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 2007
  • LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2007
  • LONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE BROADBAND PRIZE FOR FICTION 2007
  • SHORTLISTED FOR THE SOUTH BANK SHOW LITERTURE AWARD 2007

What Was Lost (original edition) by Catherine O'Flynn

Part ghost story and part mystery, What Was Lost is an enthralling tale of a little girl lost, wrapped in a portrait of a changing community over two decades. What binds it all together so impressively is O’Flynn’s emotional articulacy, which captures life’s sad, strange absurdities and glosses them with a kind of nobility

Observer

The 1980s. Kate Meaney – with her ‘Top Secret’ notebook and Mickey her toy monkey – is busy being a junior detective. She observes goings-on and follows ‘suspects’ at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping centre and in her street, where she is friends with the newsagent’s son, Adrian. 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 2004, Adrian’s sister Lisa – stuck in a going-nowhere relationship – is working as a deputy manager at Your Music, a cut-price record store. Every day she tears her hair out at the horribly bizarre behaviour of her customers and colleagues. But together with security guard Kurt, she becomes entranced by the little girl they keep glimpsing on the centre’s CCTV. As their after-hours friendship intensifies, they investigate how these sightings might be connected to the unsettling history of Green Oaks itself.

A superb, haunting novel from a new literary talent

Daily Mail

This smartly written debut combines an unsettling personal story with a long, hard look at modern urban life … [it] captures both the charm and the ugliness of childhood. Inventive and humorous, O’Flynn saves her best lines for the more monstrous members of the retail trade

Independent

Such is the sheer quality of writing, characterisation and skilful construction that it is hard to believe this is a first novel. O’Flynn deftly combines humour, love, loss and grief. Contemporary literary prose at its finest, surely has book prize potential

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