By: Brooke Davis
ISBN: 9780733632754
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Publication Date: 1/27/2015
Format: Other
My Rating: 3 Stars
Millie Bird (aka Captain Funeral), seven-years old and ever hopeful, always wears red gumboots to match her red, curly hair. Her struggling mother leaves Millie in a local department store and never returns.
Agatha Pantha, eighty-two, has not left her house – or spoken to another human being – since she was widowed seven years ago. She fills the silences by yelling at passers by, watching loud static on the TV and maintaining a strict daily schedule.
Karl the Touch Typist, eighty-seven, once used his fingers to type out love notes on his wife's skin. Now he types his words out into the air as he speaks. Karl is moved into a nursing home but in a moment of clarity and joy, he escapes.
A series of events binds the three together on a road trip that takes them from the south coast of WA to Kalgoorlie and along the Nullarbor to the edge of the continent. Millie wants to find her mum. Karl wants to find out how to be a man. And Agatha just wants everything to go back to how it was.
They will discover that old age is not the same as death, that the young can be wise, and that letting yourself experience sadness just might be the key to life.
My Review
A special thank you First to Read Penguin for a complientary ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Australian Brooke Davis’ Lost and Found is a quirky debut tragicomic novel, where young meets old for a hilarious, charming, and whimsical road trip adventure of life’s messiness, and lessons for hope and survival.
Ok, so you have three different funky characters, whose path intersects and set on a road trip to find Millie’s mother. Can you imagine the conversation and wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall? Well read on to find out their viewpoints of the world. They all have experienced loss, so there is only one way to go and that is up, since they are at the bottom.
Millie Bird, seven year old who sees life as pretty much lifeless and dead, when her father dies and later her mother abandons her at age three months in a department store.
Karl is an eight-seven year old, a touch typist and escapee from a nursing home, spending his days and nights thinking of his lost wife, craves adventure, and sex. He just wants to feel something – love!
Agatha, a not so happy cantankerous widow, locked away in her house for the last seven years with a rigid schedule and her only pastime is yelling and cursing the people who pass by her window.
Everyone wants to go back to the way it was before, or do they? We all will die someday, so no need to spend time wasting away thinking about it. Three lost souls and misfits have to face their past in order to have a future and find solace in one another along the way.
Millie is imaginative whereby Karl and Agatha are the eccentric grandparent types, willing to break the rules and have some fun, and break out of their comfort zone, while this unlikely group learns how to live again.
A quirky and witty adventure of loss, grief, tragedy, love, joy, friendship, caring and hope with endearing characters bringing tears of sympathy and happiness.
