LoveReading Expert Review of Lost & Found
A profound memoir that explores the balance of our strongest emotions
Lost & Found is a memoir by Kathryn Schulz and a rich exploration of what it is to live in a complex world where we both delight in the joy of ‘finding’ while simultaneously dealing with the despair of loss. On the Loss side of the equation Schulz delves into everything from the frustration of losing everyday objects to the devastation of grief, and on the Found side she reflects on love and marriage and moments where ‘things’ are either recovered having vanished or are discovered anew. In the space of eighteen months two life-changing things happen in her world. First she meets the woman she will later marry, and then she loses her father - a man so remarkable and rich in character I would happily read a book just about him. In the way that life completes such circles, Schulz has fallen in love with her partner having recognised within her something of her father, and then her partner is there to support her through her grief. The stories flow easily between the broad and the narrow - the unimaginable loss her grandparents felt through exile during the war, to finding a pair of sunglasses lost to the ocean, to laying hands on a freshly landed meteorite, and to the author’s home town baseball team losing the world series. In addition to being a thought-provoking memoir this is also a guide book on how to move on when anything is lost and how to fully appreciate gifts when they come to you. The writing is beautiful and the philosophy insightful. In itself the book is a journey of discovering new ideas even as page after page it turns towards its inevitable end. I have been given books to read about grief before but they are never like this. Lost & Found goes deeper but also offers a much wider perspective and reveals a world held together by these moments that seem to tear it apart.
Lost & Found Synopsis
Eighteen months before Kathryn Schulz's beloved father died, she met the woman she would marry. In Lost & Found, she weaves the stories of those relationships into a brilliant exploration of how all our lives are shaped by loss and discovery - from the maddening disappearance of everyday objects to the sweeping devastations of war, pandemic, and natural disaster; from finding new planets to falling in love.
Three very different American families form the heart of Lost & Found: the one that made Schulz's father, a charming, brilliant, absentminded Jewish refugee; the one that made her partner, an equally brilliant farmer's daughter and devout Christian; and the one she herself makes through marriage. But Schulz is also attentive to other, more universal kinds of conjunction: how private happiness can coexist with global catastrophe, how we get irritated with those we adore, how love and loss are themselves unavoidably inseparable. The resulting book is part memoir, part guidebook to living in a world that is simultaneously full of wonder and joy and wretchedness and suffering - a world that always demands both our gratitude and our grief.
A staff writer at the New Yorker and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Kathryn Schulz writes with curiosity, tenderness, erudition, and wit about our finite yet infinitely complicated lives. Crafted with the emotional clarity of C. S. Lewis and the intellectual force of Susan Sontag, Lost & Found is an uncommon book about common experiences.
About This Edition
| ISBN: | 9781529000504 |
| Publication date: | 28th April 2022 |
| Author: | Kathryn Schulz |
| Publisher: | Picador an imprint of Pan Macmillan |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 256 pages |
| Collections: | |
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
What To Read After Lost & Found
Kathryn Schulz Press Reviews
Extraordinary . . . A profound and beautiful book . . . a moving meditation on grief and loss, but also a sparky celebration of joy, wonder and the miracle of love . . . Witty, wise, beautifully structured and written in clear, singing prose - Sunday Times
Luminescent . . . Deft, roving and elegantly written . . . Lost & Found is itself a marvel of a meditation. It left me moved, inspired and ultimately elated - Financial Times
Eloquent and tender . . . a breathtakingly beautiful set-piece, a celebration of the ordinariness and sublimity of our most fundamental connections: to parents, to children, to lovers. - Observer
An extraordinary gift of a book, a tender, searching meditation on love and loss and what it means to be human. I emerged feeling a little as if the world around me had been made anew. -- Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk
A deeply moving, richly illuminating exploration of loss and bliss. Schulz is never anything but the very best company, speaking nuanced truths from and about the deepest reaches of the heart. -- Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams
In Lost & Found, she moves between the philosophical and the intimate, turning a memoir of love and death into an exploration of the way chance becomes fate and grief intertwines with gratitude. -- Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror
An unfolding astonishment to read -- Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home
In this profound mediation on loss and revelation, on how we relinquish those we love and learn to love others, Kathryn Schulz has created a masterpiece of metaphysical insight, at once richly lyrical and piercingly specific. -- Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon
Lost and Found is the most daring of books: a memoir by a happy person. Deeply felt and exquisitely written, it's an absorbing exploration of love and loss -- not to mention meteorites, Dante and bears. The prodigiously talented Kathryn Schulz has written about her life in a way that will change yours. -- Andy Borowitz, author of The Borowitz Report
Our lives do indeed deserve and reward the kind of honest, gentle, brilliant scrutiny [Schulz] brings to bear on her own life. The book is profound and beautiful. -- Marilynne Robinson, author of Housekeeping and Gilead
Pulitzer Prize-winner Kathryn Shulz's grief memoir offers clarity and wisdom on how loss and discovery are never far apart from one another. - Esquire
Other editions of this book
ISBN: 9781529000504
Publication date: 28/04/2022
Format: Hardback
About Kathryn Schulz
Kathryn Schulz has written for a number of US publications from Rolling Stone to the New York Times, on subjects as varied as right-wing film festivals to the impact of antidepressant use on Japanese culture. In 2004 she was awarded a Pew Fellowship in International Journalism.
More About Kathryn Schulz
