Published by Regan Books Hardback--retail $26.00, ISBN 0060393823, 384 pages, October 2, 2001 Paperback--retail $14.95, ISBN 0060988649, 384 pages September 17, 2002
Gregory Maguire has managed to write another novel that is both decidedly fantastical and decidedly for adults. Like his earlier masterpieces (Wicked and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister), Lost is in part inspired by a well-known fairy tale. However, unlike the earlier two books, this one bears only a slight resemblance to the story that inspired its central theme: The story of Scrooge from A Christmas Carol. The book also takes inspiration from the true story of Jack the Ripper and seems to bear marks of influence from various children's stories (most notably Peter Pan).
Some spoilers below; skip summary for opinion-oriented review.
The main character, Winifred Rudge (a.k.a. Winnie), is an American author who wishes to make a name for herself writing fiction. Unfortunately, her most successful writing has been an astrology book she's published under a pen name, and though its various printings keep her cupboard full, she's struggling as an artist. She decides she needs some inspiration, and though this is portrayed innocently enough, it turns out that Winnie is actually subconsciously using her search to begin working through painful issues of her past. After being unable to find inspiration in the States, Winnie hops a plane to England, where her cousin John lives, and hopes to stay there until inspiration strikes.
Unfortunately, her cousin is not there when she arrives, though there is ample evidence that the builders he has hired have been in and out of the place, doing a lot of damage but not getting a lot done. Winnie tries to ignore the fact that her cousin has apparently abandoned her to an empty house, and gets on with her mission of writing. She struggles with several possible storylines, trying to get her character to be more real to her. Maybe Wendy Pritzke is solving a mystery; maybe she's in a love story; maybe she's investigating a ghost. Whatever the case, the increasingly mysterious absence of Winnie's cousin begins to nag at her, and so does the work of the builders. It appears that something is stopping them from doing the kitchen remodel.
Odd sounds and very odd occurrences (i.e., the newly-embedded nails actually pushing themselves out of the wall, and a slashed-cross symbol appearing everywhere) spook the builders into abandoning the remodel altogether, leaving Winnie to face whatever has apparently been disturbed and unleashed by the upheaval. In her investigation, she meets memorable neighbors, one of whom is a batty old lady who writes notes to herself everywhere and one of whom is a widow with too many children. Through befriending the widow, Winnie is introduced to a couple other strange characters: A transvestite fortune-teller and a man who finds her strangely attractive even though she lies to him and avoids him.
And speaking of avoiding, the people at her cousin John's job keep giving her the runaround about his whereabouts. She wonders if he is avoiding her or if something terrible has happened. In her search for both information about her cousin and her search for inspiration, more clues of her past come out, including her admission that she is the descendent of a man believed to be Dickens's inspiration for writing about Scrooge. Her relative was said to be possibly crazy and plagued by ghosts, and the story goes that Dickens, a lad at the time, listened to her great-great-grandfather's raving and was inspired to create the mysterious and compelling Ebenezer.
After much drama, Winnie convinces her male companion to call John's office, and they find out that he has been successfully avoiding her. (Having a man call did not ring the secretary's warning bells, to tell her to lie and say he is out of the office indefinitely.) It turns out that she has quite a history with her cousin; they are cousins through a family marriage, and she was attracted to him in the past. Though this bit of the story is told attractively in bits and pieces of Winnie's writing about Wendy, it is obvious it is her own story; she traveled to a remote location in Asia with her cousin John as her companion, ended up sleeping with him (consummating emotional attachments), and then being unable to claim the baby she was to adopt because the nanny of the several babies had died during the night, which allowed the fire to go out, and all of the infants froze to death during the night. Confronted with her emotional drama coming out in the character of Wendy Pritzke, Winnie goes a bit dotty when she is asked to put it behind her, and delves further into the mystery surrounding the possible ghost in her house.
Apparently the ghost has been let loose out of John's wall, leaving behind only a death shroud whose fibers end up being dated by an appraiser at somewhere in the middle ages. The spirit of the woman who'd been wrapped in it ended up possessing one of the cats of the batty old woman who is John's neighbor, and then possesses Mrs. Maddingly herself. The ghost is confused and speaks in a guttural medieval French, and Winnie, feeling that she's lost everything, invites the ghost to go from the crazy neighbor into herself. This is where it gets very interesting.
The ghost is a woman named Gervasa from medieval France, and Winnie finds out more about her as she becomes accustomed to having this other presence in her head. She escapes the hospital where she was being held and devotes herself to a totally different mystery: Solving an event that surrounded Gervasa's centuries-old death wish. Winnie and her mental piggy-backer travel to an ancient church to find out whether her child was condemned to Purgatory by the gospel of the time. Eventually finding that the child would have gone to Heaven with a clean soul despite their misinterpretation of a slashed-cross symbol on their grave, Gervasa has fulfilled her mission, and Winnie helps her to die properly. It's only then that Winnie begins to pick up the pieces of her own life and get over her past.
And now my review. . . .
Of Maguire's books, I enjoyed this one the least, mostly because it just took so long for the character of Winifred Rudge to become sympathetic. I enjoyed the way she played with scenes for her character, but other than that I found few compelling qualities about her until I found out why she was so sort of standoffish (i.e., painful past, unresolved relationships, et cetera). Wicked was my favorite, followed by Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, but even though this was slow to start and whatnot, it had a powerful ending and was not neatly wrapped up with a bow like most fairy tales, which lends to its realism. (Call me crazy, but I *like* dangling details and some lack of resolution.) The interaction with a very tangible ghost was something of a surprise, considering the spooky-but-not-quite-otherworldly feeling of the whole first three quarters of the book. Also, it was impressive how Maguire put this bizarre happening into the real world, complete with other (normal) people's reactions intact (for example, the appraiser's disbelief when a death shroud legitimately dates to the middle ages, and modern linguists' ability to interpret some but not all of the medieval French dialect). In any case, the book comes recommended for fans of Maguire's other work and fans of reworked, adult fairy tales and fantastical storylines with some basis in the reality we know.
What would you get if you re-imagined Survivor as a supernatural horror series, then played the whole thing absolutely straight-faced?
Someone who is not familiar with Lost might think that what you'd get is a complete mess. Reality shows are only worth watching if they're actually... real, right? Professional actors performing from a script would strip away what little reason there might be to watch the show in the first place. And even if they didn't (a detractor might say), the whole desert island thing has been done to death, both in comedy and in drama. What is there left to be done?
But somehow, despite the absurdity of its project (or perhaps because of it), Lost works.
The Premise
A passenger jet travelling from Sydney to Los Angeles crashes on a remote island somewhere in the Pacific, leaving forty-eight survivors to scrape together enough food and water to last them until help arrives. Help does not come, however, and the survivors slowly come to the realization that they may be stuck on this island for a long, long time. They have to learn to live on scant resources and primitive technology. They have to learn to live with one another -- no small feat given the neurotic group that made it this far. And finally, what is perhaps most difficult of all, each survivor has to learn to live with his own demons. Through masterful flashback sequences -- sometimes spooky, sometimes funny, and sometimes almost unbearably sad -- we learn what it was that brought each character to Australia, and what forced him or her to leave it. Very slowly, connections between the characters' lives are drawn, both in the past and in the present.
The survivors include a has-been rock star who is also a heroin addict, and who has to deal with a rather brutal way of kicking his habit cold turkey. There is a criminal -- of what sort, we're not told for quite some time, since the federal marshall who was escorting her was killed in the crash. There is a physician, who was clearly a type A personality even before he got here, who suddenly finds himself clawing through the wreckage in search of medicines to help the wounded. There is a Korean couple who cannot communicate with anyone else on the island (and who do not seem to be especially good at communicating with each other either). There is an obese young man who finds it even more frustrating to hunt, fish, and scavenge than the others. There is a pregnant woman. There is an old man who has a rather alarming talent with knives which proves handy when hunting for food, but which also makes him rather creepy to be around.
Oh. And I shouldn't forget to mention the monsters.
Since this isn't a reality show, Lost does not need to avoid torturing, killing, or otherwise traumatizing its characters, and it doesn't need to stay within the bounds of reality as we know it. Though the show focuses on the characters' day-to-day lives about ninety percent of the time, occasionally it veers in the direction of science fiction. The viewer soon learns that there are other things living on the island, some of which may be human, some of which clearly are not. But just when the viewer has confidently reached a conclusion about what these things might be, a hairpin turn in the plot causes her to re-evaluate her opinions. And given the fact that everyone on this island seems to be going just a wee bit barmy, the possibility is never distant that the monsters aren't real at all.
It is hard to talk at any length about this series without spoiling it, since it gets so much of its dramatic power from surprises and startling discoveries of various sorts. So I will simply say that the first season of Lost has some of the cleverest dialogue and some of the most interesting characters I've encountered on network TV in years, and I've gotten in the habit of clearing out my datebook on Wednesday nights just so I can watch it. Whether the gimmicks that propel this show can keep its energy up for longer than one season, only time will tell. I'm pessimistic, but I'm glad to enjoy the ride while it lasts.
Lost, created by Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams, and Damon Lindelof.
Starring:
The show I keep waiting for the writers to screw up...
That said, Lost is the first television show I've become intent on watching every week since Twin Peaks. It somehow masterfully manages to dance along the line of mysticism and mystery without requiring a dramatic leap into suspension of disbelief. What some consider a problem with the show, I consider to be its leading strength: Its failure to reveal the answers to exactly what is going on.
The cast consists of unlikely survivors of a plane crash. At one point we are shown survival by anyone would have been pretty much impossible, since the plane broke apart in mid-air. They are a thousand miles off-course and no one is looking for them. The first issue is survival. The next is trying to get off the island. In the midst of this is thrown the knowledge that this is no ordinary island. This is what we have for a premise. The writers could insult our intelligence by simplifying things and explaining things in a clear and easy manner, but they avoid this. Every question that is raised has more than one potential answer, and the viewer is invited to draw their own conclusions.
For those who have not watched the first season of Lost and intend to, there may be spoilers below.
Paying close attention to the characters focused on in the storyline, you come to realize that in reality none of these people really has a reason to go back to civilization and yet they are all pretty much intent on doing so. Here is one of the reasons I'm drawn to the show... There are 43 survivors and we only really meet a dozen of them in any depth. At one point one of the secondary characters rants about how no one pays any attention to them. It is a clever exchange of dialogue that answers viewers' questions about "Why isn't anyone paying attention to the rest of them?" Supporting characters complaining about not getting enough air time. And when they do, they tend to die, a clever parody of the old "throwaway characters" we all knew were fated to die on shows like Star Trek. These are my kind of writers.
What becomes obvious in the first season of Lost is that these survivors are facing essential "tests." The unresolved issues of their lives are haunting them in very vivid and real ways, and they are gaining the ability to overcome the obstacles that once stood in the way of what they desired in life.
John Locke, confined to a wheelchair, a cubicle and a low end office job dreams of a survivalist trip through the Australian Outback. He is declined the opportunity because of his handicap, despite years of training for this "mission." When the plane crashes, he is able to walk again and he is in the midst of the survivalist adventure he dreamed of. This is the most obvious "gift" quality of what sometimes seems to be a psychotic Fantasy Island. Yet these are not simply gifts or fulfilled fantasies, they are accompanied by difficult tests. Consider a heroin junkie wanting to kick the habit and being forced to quit cold turkey because of the crash. In his backstory we see that he once prayed to the Virgin Mary to give him the strength not to indulge in the first place when those around him were overtaken by it. What happens? He comes upon a crashed plane used to smuggle heroin... and there it is, stashed inside hollow Virgin Mary statues. This might become trite if it was resolved quickly, but it isn't, this will torture him for quite some time. We're left again to wonder when someone sees him with one of the statues and says, "I didn't know you were religious." He responds, "I'm not," even though we know he is, and it is left at that. What starts as a simple question of "Will he or won't he shoot up?" becomes a larger question of whether he will persevere in the battle with his inner demons.
The "failure" to quickly resolve any of the issues the characters face is a torment to viewers who are used to television being a source of instant gratification. Lost isn't about instant gratification, and it will torture you if that is what you are looking for.
Why am I waiting for the writers to screw up?
There has been a slight slippage, which I hope is only minor. The show has a habit of pounding certain elements into our heads, perhaps in the interest of viewers who haven't been paying attention from the beginning. The story of Michael, a father who gave up custody of his son too easily and regrets the decision, now has an opportunity for nothing but quality time with him. This storyline is becoming redundant, even as it relates to his son being taken away from him again. We know the deal here, and as the second season started we were shown basically the same backstory for the third time with only minimal new information, as interesting as that new information might have been. If the writers start dumbing it down, getting into needless repetition, rushing the story to satisfy impatient viewers or using cheap plot devices, they'll lose the show.
As someone who spends an awful lot of time thinking about purgatory, I've found the show to mirror in many ways my own beliefs about the nature of life and death. There are things to be resolved, tabs to be paid and blessings to be given. My conclusion about the nature of the island is that it is a kind of purgatory, whether "real" or manmade in nature. Are you willing to pay the price to achieve what you truly seek? If I were to identify with a character, I'd be Locke with hair.
The key is that any conclusion you may draw about what is happening or the nature of the island will never be proven or disproven, and this is very intentional. The show floats very cleverly in the land of "maybe" and that is what, in my opinion, makes this a great show in an age dominated by black and white answers and television shows that think we aren't bright enough to connect the dots unless they are in a straight line. How long can they balance on this high wire? Like I said, I keep waiting for them to screw up...
This much is known. But then I thought, what if they are building upon mythic culture? Is that so absurd? Given the writers' obvious knowledge of obscure (and not so obscure) cultural references, science fiction, and children's literature, I thought that it might be worthwhile looking at the show through the lense of Indo-European mythology.
In Indo-European studies, it is believed that society can be broken down into three functions: religous, governing, and producing. In other words, priests, warriors, and farmers. How does this apply to LOST?
DUMEZIL'S INDO-EUROPEAN FUNCTION SYSTEM:
But not only do the characters fit a type of Dumezilian system common to Indo-European myth and culture, but they also evoke certain mythic archetypes within those cultures.
MYTHICAL ARCHETYPES:
Other characters are not so easily placed, of course: Hurley is more of a comic figure; Kate has elements similar to Artemis, but not enough for a full identification; Charlie is difficult to place.
The Finale, I suppose, will enact Ragnarok, not necessarily with the death of the survivors, but with the destruction of the Island, as well as the Others. Of course, it could take a different turn, who knows?
Additions are welcome
The agency phone and say they want me to work. I want to wash my hair, they want me to leave immediately. We thrash it out for a minute, and then the dragonlady says she is sending round a scooter to pick me up. Now.
I have to settle for washing my face, instead.
I don't know the city as yet, we have only just moved to Asia, but as the driver crosses a bridge over water I realise that I am now on the outskirts. The streets look the same: there are few distinguishing features in this modern, densely packed city.
When I finish work and leave the high-rise building, I am at a loss. It is now night time, and I have no idea where the metro is. The streets are full of fast cars, a few neon lights wink from buildings, but mostly it is dark. I try to ask some people, make train noises, but they stare at me blankly or laugh at my pidgin Chinese.
I am supposed to be meeting my boyfriend at a Temple, so we can go to a night market nearby. I wander the streets for half an hour and am nearly crying by now, lost and lonely, frightened in this strange city.
Then a man comes up. He says his english name is Tim, and he will give me a lift on his scooter. He is in his forties and has a quaint, old-fashioned quality.
He drives like a maniac, and all the way there, he sternly tells me not to speak to strange men. "Like you?" I think.
He asks me how I think he will vote in the election. He is very surprised that I guess correctly.
"How did you know?" he yells, looking back over his shoulder, as the scooter swerves and I mentally prepare to die.
When we reach the Temple safely I am weak after all the agitation. I feel a rush of affection and gratitude towards Tim and give him a hug, which embarrasses him. His duty towards lost British girls fulfilled, he speeds off into the night on his scooter.
Lost (?), a. [Prop. p. p. of OE. losien. See Lose, v. t.]
1.
Parted with unwillingly or unintentionally; not to be found; missing; as, a lost book or sheep.
2.
Parted with; no longer held or possessed; as, a lost limb; lost honor.
3.
Not employed or enjoyed; thrown away; employed ineffectually; wasted; squandered; as, a lost day; a lost opportunity or benefit.
5.
Having wandered from, or unable to find, the way; bewildered; perplexed; as, a child lost in the woods; a stranger lost in London.
6.
Ruined or destroyed, either physically or morally; past help or hope; as, a ship lost at sea; a woman lost to virtue; a lost soul.
7.
Hardened beyond sensibility or recovery; alienated; insensible; as, lost to shame; lost to all sense of honor.
8.
Not perceptible to the senses; no longer visible; as, an island lost in a fog; a person lost in a crowd.
9.
Occupied with, or under the influence of, something, so as to be insensible of external things; as, to be lost in thought.
Lost motion Mach., the difference between the motion of a driver and that of a follower, due to the yielding of parts or looseness of joints.
© Webster 1913.
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