73 pages • 2 hours read
John ConnollyThe Book of Lost Things
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Of All That Was Found and All That Was Lost”
David, an only child, lives with his mother and father in London as Hitler’s armies gradually advance across Europe during World War II. David loves his mother more than anything or anyone. Sadly, his mother is dying, and to keep her alive, David performs “routines” such as favoring even numbers and getting out of bed with his left foot first. He feels like following these rules he has created for himself will help his mother survive. He sits by her bedside every day after school, and she instills in him a reverence for stories. Even before she became sick, David and his mother loved to sit together and read their own books. David’s mother says that stories come alive when they are told and have the power to, “transform the reader” (3).
When David’s mother dies, he feels partially responsible. Perhaps he failed to perform one of his routines perfectly, and her death is his punishment. During his mother’s burial, David wonders whether she feels lonely or if she’s already in heaven. Following his mother’s death, David loses himself in books. He feels strangely drawn to the stories his mother used to read to him, and he hears the books talking to him.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Of Rose and Dr. Moberly, and the Importance of Details”
David feels somewhat relieved that his mother is gone, mostly because she was so sick in her final months that she no longer seemed like the mother David once knew. However, after a few days, David feels guilty for feeling relieved and guilt continues to gnaw at him. He continues observing his routines, thinking that although they did not save his mother, maybe they preserved his father’s life. David’s father introduces him to Rose, the administrator of the care facility where his mother died. David’s father and Rose have begun dating, but David is distressed at the thought of his father caring for anyone besides his mother, especially since she died just five months ago. Seeing Rose and his father kiss, David blacks out. When he comes to, he hears whispers in his head and has a vague memory of wolves and a forest.
David’s blackouts continue, leaving David with strange memories. David’s father takes him to see a psychiatrist named Dr. Moberley. David can hear the books in Dr. Moberley’s office talking but doesn’t tell the doctor about the voices he’s been hearing or the strange memories he has from his blackouts. David becomes so distressed during his appointment with Dr. Moberley that he has another blackout, and this time, he hears his mother’s voice and sees a crooked man lingering in the shadows.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Of the New House, the New Child, and the New King”
As the war continues, London prepares for bombings. David considers whether he would be able to drop a bomb on an enemy city if he were a bomber, thinking that he would have to pretend that the bomb wouldn’t hurt anyone. His sessions with Dr. Moberley continue, but David has a hard time understanding him because the books on his shelves have grown louder. Following a session with Dr. Moberly, David’s father tells him that Rose is pregnant, and he is going to marry her.
When Rose gives birth, David feels like the new baby is not really his brother, since it’s Rose’s child, not his mother’s. David and his father leave the city to live with Rose in a large house surrounded by gardens and forests. The house has been in Rose’s family for several generations and offers a place of safety as the war advances toward London. In his new room at the top of the house, David places his books among the older books that already occupy the room. David reads the fairy stories and folk tales he discovers in his new room, and he notices nature creeping in, as ivy grows through cracks in the walls and insects scuttle across the floor. At night, David has recurring dreams of “the creature he had named the Crooked Man” (34) and sees him beckoning at the edge of a wood similar to the one outside Rose’s house.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Connolly tackles weighty issues in the first few chapters, such as parent-child relationships, death, and adjustment to a new family dynamic. David has a close relationship with his mother, so her death deeply affects him, and he has a difficult time accepting Rose and Georgie. His mother instilled in him an appreciation for stories, and some of David’s most precious moments with his mother involved reading together. When his mother gets sick, their parent and child roles ironically reverse, as David reads to his mother rather than listening to her read to him.
When David’s father tells him that Rose is pregnant, David feels like having a brother that came from Rose is a betrayal of his mother. His close relationship with his mother makes it particularly difficult for David to accept her death and receive the many changes in his life, such as the arrival of Georgie. Using the major plot events of David’s mother’s death and Rose’s pregnancy, Connolly addresses heavy topics such as losing a parent and adjusting to a new family.
Connolly introduces a foundational theme of the novel in these first three chapters: stories, particularly fairytales. Much of David’s love for stories results from the way his mother spoke about books. She spoke of books as if they were alive, telling him that stories want to be read, and that they come alive when they are told. Although fairytales are some of David’s favorite types of stories, they remind him of his mother, so he tries to avoid reading them after her death. He feels frustrated that real life is not like the world in his stories, where good is rewarded and evil is punished. However, the books begin to call to him, and he can hear them whispering as if, “They had found a kind of existence independent of the pages they occupied” (10). When he moves to Rose’s house, David puts his newer books next to the older books already on the shelf, and David feels a change in the room. He is drawn to the fairytales and folktales in his room, and notices that these older books contain descriptions of a forest that matches the woods surrounding Rose’s house. Connolly uses the books to bridge the gap between the world David inhabits and the forest world he will soon enter. He personifies David’s books, suggesting they have feelings and can speak with one another. Stories and books continue to appear throughout the novel as a major theme that unifies the plot.
Connolly also uses narrative devices such as flashbacks and foreshadowing to explain David’s feelings and hint at events to come. For example, he uses a flashback to discuss David’s mother’s final few months before her death. Even though he has already informed the reader that she died, Connolly explains what those final months were like for David and his father, and how her death brought David relief, followed by guilt. This use of a flashback allows the reader to focus on David’s feelings, rather than the events that produced those feelings.
Another narrative device Connolly uses is foreshadowing. When David experiences his fainting spells, or “attacks” (20), he wakes with faint memories of a castle, wolves, and a forest, and as time passes, has recurring dreams of the Crooked Man. Furthermore, Connolly shares that the descriptions of woods in the fairytale books on David’s bedroom bookshelves match the woods surrounding Rose’s house. Connolly’s use of foreshadowing introduces the reader to the other world David will enter, and hints about significant characters, such as the Crooked Man, and locations, such as the woods and castle. Connolly’s use of both flashbacks and foreshadowing allows the reader to tune in to the significance of events for David’s emotional state, as well as draws the reader’s attention to particular characters and locations.
