Some of the online debate revolved around the novel’s mystery, and some of you were annoyed that other reviewers revealed the reason for David’s experiences. I found this surprising – but isn’t that what book clubs are about? Just because I didn’t worry why David was in a parallel universe, it doesn’t mean that others shouldn’t. And John Connolly is best known as a crimewriter and perhaps he could not help but build suspense for some readers.

Eleanor Fitzsimons simply did not like the fantasy element. I have some sympathy. The book opens realistically. It is set in the Second World War. David’s mother has just died and it seems that we are about to get an account of how a boy copes with such upheaval.

That is precisely what we do get, but his coping mechanism involves Snow White and Hansel and Gretel. We are spirited into a land of cruel fantasy. This could be a leap too far, but if you give Connolly the benefit of the doubt, it is rewarding. Laura from Crowborough called the finale “one of the finest pieces of writing I have read in a long time”. If you have yet to finish Lost Things, you should.

Star letter

The Book of Lost Things is primarily about a boy becoming a man, a theme of interest to both child and adult. Poor troubled David - his mother dies, his father remarries, his stepmother has a baby, and all in wartime. His feelings of grief, rejection and resentment are understandable, and it is not surprising that the stories are distorted in his dreams.

Is the book suitable for children? I think it depends on the imagination of the child. I know a ten-year-old who had nightmares after Alice in Wonderland and 12-year-olds who love Greek myths, the gorier the better. We are spared no detail as we are drawn into David's dark world, where good does not always conquer evil. The twists enhance the tension and horror. I was impressed by Connolly's originality; but I suspect that the reworking of fairytales will appeal less to children than to those old enough to know that life isn't just about happy endings

Jean Marshall, Bushey, Herts

May 12, 2007

THE WRITERS OF Life on Mars, the hit BBC Television police series, could get away with anything because it was all a dream sequence. John Connolly has the same sort of get-out-of-jail card with The Book of Lost Things. The central character, David, is dreaming, yes – but he is also a child trying to make sense of a world so cruel that Britain is at war and his mother has died.

So it is difficult to have a juicy argument with Connolly. For a start, he is amiable and likeable and can shrug – as he did when we met – and say that anything is possible in the mind of a traumatised child. He agrees that this novel is much more suitable for a books club discussion than the crime novels for which he is better known: “There might not be a huge amount to discuss with those. Crime novels are supposed to get you from point A to point C.”

But there is much to debate about Lost Things,not least the fact that he takes the lovely stories that many of us adored as children and distorts them, cranking up the levels of evil and pain.

“I’m not sure I agree with that. There are people and things out there that are genuinely nasty. And evil is punished in a very explicit way. All of the stories are twisted because they refer to something that David is feeling; he is trying to make sense of the world.” But if you are expecting a clever, affectionate reworking of Rumpelstiltskin or Beauty and the Beast, you’re in for a shock.

Connolly has two stepsons, aged 15 and 9, and has known them for five years. But the book is not about them – or for them. It draws on his own childhood memories. “I was not influenced by the fact that they were there at all. The 15-year-old read it and liked it. I think you can read it as a straightforward story as a young teenager but that the older you are the more you get from the book. It is clearly written as an adult looking back and is about adult themes such as grief and loss which you would hope a child has not had to experience.

“David is almost 13, he is moving into that period when you are becoming an adult although I am not sure that is a clear division. Children do not explode into adults, what they will become is there already. They pick up on adult things, recognise tensions, have an innate sense of things that are wrong, out of kilter. I don’t feel all that different from the way I was as a child. People in touch with their childhood are happier adults.”

Connolly knows many of his fans will not be keen to make the leap of faith to read a book that sounds so different from his crime fiction. But it is his favourite of his books and Connolly thriller fans who have read it say that they notice similar themes. Given that Connolly lets his books evolve, it is not surprising that this one has, for him, worked out best. It must be tricky to write thrillers without a clear plan.

“I am not a great planner; I’m a big rewriter. But this book progressed quite naturally and the fairytales fitted in naturally. I find it hard to explain what I’m writing. You never manage to write the book you were thinking about. That’s a hard thing to live with because the book loses something in the process of writing. But this book lost least in transition to the page. I didn’t fret about it too much, the first draft is roughly the length it is now. It is a bit off the wall, it was not written to contract.

My attitude was, ‘If you don’t like it, I’ll live with it’, and that gives you a certain amount of freedom. I can take a chance because I still have crime fiction to pay the bills.”

He denies cashing in on the vogue for crossover fiction. “By the time you try to cash in on any trend, by the time you write it and deliver it, the trend has usually gone. I am aware of what crossover fiction is but I am not a big reader of it. I presented this to my publisher as an adult book. When I was a teenager, I was reading adult books.” The Book of Lost Things is very adult, unless you think that a child can handle the thought of a hunched old man ripping out and eating a girl’s heart.

Connolly laughs when I tell him how, when I told his quirky version of Hansel and Gretel to my seven-year-old, he hid under the duvet. On Hallowe’en, he said, his American editor told the story – one of the least disturbing – to some 10 to 12-years-olds who loved it. “That’s good. I’m not aiming to make seven-year-olds wet the bed, but I like the fact that a small twist can make it so much more unsettling. It all comes back to the stories being a reflection on David.” Of course they are.

The Book of Lost Things is original and moving. I shed a tear at the start and at the end and when I told John Connolly this he replied: “It’s about overcoming things; it’s not a grim novel.”

But I disagree –if you can disagree with the man who actually wrote it. After all he ought to know if it is bleak or not. Fairytales, as Connolly agrees, are a way of alerting children to the fact it can be a bad, sad world. When you tell a child about a wolf who tried to a eat a little girl you do not want or expect that child to peer round every corner on the way to school fearful of spotting a grandmother with particularly big ears and teeth. However, the versions of the fairytales in Lost Things are nastier than the originals and they haunt David, the central character, all through his life.

“In the book the Crooked Man wants David to become twisted, he wants to make him this creature of grief and loss. He doesn’t become that. Each man dreams his own heaven. I don’t think it’s a pessimistic book. We view our lives as a series of narratives, we edit, we tell stories, that’s how we live our lives. The decisions I made were not about pressing buttons, it was a personal book. My own memories of grief and loss are in there.”

The scenes in which David is taken to psychiatrist are highly autobiographical. The young Connolly exhibited Obsessive Compulsive behaviour, which, in his early teens, was not something everyone knew about.

“That whole thing with the psychiatrist; that’s me with a doctor in Dublin. My parents hauled me off to a psychiatrist and after three visits my mother said ‘you know this is costing us £60 an hour, when do you think you are going to be cured?’ And that’s when I realised I wasn’t gong to have a Woody Allen style relationship with my analyst.’

So, what was the diagnosis? “You know what he said; ‘I think he’s a bit of a worrier.’ That’s like going to the doctor and being told: ‘You know what, you’re a bit ill. The symptoms point to you being poorly’ It was a most unhelpful thing. But I was really just unhappy.”

The young Connolly carried the same two books around with him for two years. “Now I have a tendency towards neatness. But I don’t think it’s unusual for us all to want to impose some kind of order.”

I was surprised that a writer form Dublin used the same fairytales I grew up with. I expected some sort of Gaelic flavour.

“I’ve never written about Ireland and I never will, I have no desire to. These are universal stories. The Brothers Grimm said every society produces their own version of the same tales. There’s a Chinese version of the Cinderella story which appears to have developed entirely independently of the European one. And it’s early enough so that you can’t put it down to travellers exchanging stories. Something Irish might not have that universal relevance.

“I don’t have fairly tales on my bookshelves but I can rattle off 10 or 12 off the top of my head and think it’s really interesting the way they filter into us. Some of them are bits of Disney obviously.”

This is not your typical Disney fare though. It is not a happy book. There are some very funny moments but there is an all pervasive sadness. Connolly says this evolved naturally, he cannot explain why he chose to allow David’s loved ones to die.

“If there is a message in the story, it is that books are important,” Connolly said. But we usually leave books behind with, if they are powerful enough, a vague sense of privilege. Connolly’s books stay with and define his hero. The question is; do they save him or wreck him?

Buy The Book of Lost Things for £5.59 (free p&p) at timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

The key questions

Does John Connolly tinker with traditional fairytales or does he overhaul them completely?

Is this book suitable for children?

Do the Crooked Man's evil plots go too far and become uncomfortably unsettling?

Do fairytales possess an acceptable moral framework in the first place?

April 28, 2007

John Connolly has a cult following for his crime novels and can clearly plot twists and turns. He has applied that talent to his own life by producing a very different book – one that his fans might find perplexing. The Book of Lost Things is a reworking of the best fairy stories known in one form or another around the world. It is an interesting idea, but could easily fail. After all, we read Goldilocks and the Three Bears as children and then move on.

The book is about David, a boy struggling to cope with the death of his mother and the fact that England is at war. He discovers a strange world at the bottom of his garden. It is full the characters he has read about – but much more frightening. You might remember Rumpelstiltskin as an angry dwarf – Connolly turns him into the Crooked Man, a far more evil adversary. The tortures he inflicts are some of the most disturbing images I have read. Do not make the mistake of thinking that this will be comfort reading.

Connolly is capable of humour, too, and I enjoyed his version of Snow Whiteas an ignorant, belching slob, surrounded by Marxist dwarves. He has produced a highly original novel using stories that we all know. But think twice before reading his version of Hansel and Gretel to your kids. My seven-year-old was not happy at all.

Hodder, £6.99, 502pp

Thanks to Hodder, we have six signed copies of The Book of Lost Things to give to the first four book groups to e-mail their details to books@thetimes.co.uk. Buy The Book of Lost Things for £5.59 (free p&p) hardback or paperback or call 0870 1608080

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