Author Helen Paris once spent some time in a lost property office on a research project. These offices are where a city’s lost property ends up, waiting to be reclaimed by its owners. Fitting, then, that the setting of her debut novel, Lost Property published by Penguin Random House, is the London Transport Lost Property office. “Loss touches all of us,” she writes. “It is pervasive, and it never ends.” Whether it’s a designer bag left in the back of a cab, a woolly scarf abandoned on the number 44 bus, an umbrella, a loved one.
Protagonist Dot Watson has lost her way. Wracked with guilt and grief, she has tucked herself away in the London Transport Lost Property office, finding solace in cataloguing misplaced things. Indeed, this dusty place filled with discarded objects affords her the solitary life she craves.
When elderly Mr Appleby walks through the door in search of his late wife's purse, Dot immediately feels drawn to him. Determined to help, Dot sets off on an extraordinary journey that could lead her to where she belongs.
Paris’s setting for her story is metaphoric: a stale stereotypical government office above dark and dingy corridors branching off into drab storage spaces where every item wears a mustard-coloured label with a description and place of where it was found.
Dot is quirky, in many ways reminiscent of Eleanor Oliphant in the novel Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. Faced with similar social challenges, like Eleanor, Dot also prefers her own company, adheres to her own routines, and quietly judges those around her. Still, Dot is very much a unique character with unique issues. Her respect for the forlorn objects and her dedication to the retrievers arriving to seek their lost goods is pure commitment, but may or may not be based on something more profound, perhaps on her own sense of loss, secrets, guilt and worthlessness…
In any event, don’t expect this to be a light-hearted happily-ever-after read about matching people to their lost treasures. Paris cleverly uses this ‘ordinary’ environment to address various provocative issues, including suicide, sexual assault and substance abuse.
Dot’s story, beautifully crafted, I might add, is about love, family secrets, forgiveness, loss and being lost. Although it takes the reader to some dark corners of the human psyche, it also suggests that there is always light to be found, even in the gloom.
Ultimately, a moving and uplifting read about what it takes to find your place in the world.
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