Lost & Found (Brooke Davis)

LOST AND FOUND by Brooke Davis

ISBN 978 0 7336 3275 4 (pbk) 
Published 2014 Hachette Australia

 Somehow I have an extra-sensory magnet that attracts me to Australian authors.
After finishing this book, I realised that I had heard an interview on ABC radio
in which they talked about grief and how each person approaches it in their own
way, but some aspects of the process remain the same.  Being interviewed was 
Brooke Davis who wrote this brilliant story Lost & Found with lovable and warm
characters: Millie Bird (a seven year old who realise that everything around her is 
dying), Agatha Pantha (82 years old and has not left her house since her husband
died) and Karl the Touch Typist (an 87 year old who absconds from the nursing 
home where his son left him). 

Brooke has written an excellent book which brings together three different people
and their experiences of the grieving processes. on the cover of Lost and Found, it
says "A story to make you laugh, cry and feel a bit wiser." This is true, but in my
case i wasn't aware that it was about grief until I was nearly finished it. The article
"Relearning the world"  by the author gives insight into how she came to write the
book and also into her own grief over the sudden loss of her mother.

Set in Western Australia, this novel is funny, witty, surprising and full of honesty, 
although the truth comes out as the story unwinds each characters' truths, to reveal
the deepness of how life changes with the loss of someone close and how it may 
affect the way we view life after such a life-changing event. How each character
is moved to be there for the other in altruistic ways tells about how we may let 
ourselves grow accustomed to the new life that is forced upon us or how we may 
search to make new meaning out of the situation we  are now in and thus, a new life.