Picking a book about books is possibly the hardest category I've had to do. I only landed on The Secret of Lost Things really because I was down to the wire--past the wire, really--and it was on my To Be Read bookshelf and it seemed perfect. I have difficulty with decisions, ok? As has often happened with this challenge, this book found me exactly when I needed it: The Secret of Lost Things is about a girl who recently lost her mother and packs her life up to move from Tasmania to New York to try to find her way on her own and ends up employed at a strange and labyrinthine book emporium named The Arcade.Rosemary Savage is young and naive and she makes a lot of mistakes by the end, but she is unabashedly trying to find her place in the world. She works hard for what she wants, even if those things are a little misguided, but she is pretty sublimely unapologetic for most of her decisions. She has experienced such loss, loss of her mother and her home and her country, and she cuts herself loose from the tenuous links she has after that loss to move forward. She is shoved forward by her friend and mother-surrogate Chaps, who buys her plane ticket, but once there she pushes forward on her own. Rosemary creates her own space, makes herself a new home all her own in a little run-down apartment, something that I have been working on for the past few months, making my space my home again after all the shifting I've undergone. Rosemary's description of her new apartment struck me, the timbre of it, talking about surrounding yourself with small things that make you smile to foment an aura of homeliness.
Books about books are possibly some of my favorite books to read. The Shadow of the Wind is one of my all-time favorite books and Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore rocketed to the top of the list as well when I found it a few years ago. I could list all my favorite books about books forever and still have more to talk about. The Secret of Lost Things does fall into this beloved category, and I enjoyed it, but I don't think it will be joining the ranks of my favorites. It had all the makings of a favorite, but somehow failed to deliver. Being a coming-of-age story as well at heart, it makes sense that not everything was resolved or defined at the end (I did like that parallel), but I thought I'd signed up for a literary mystery and I was left lacking and a little disconcerted at the end. I did love learning about Melville and the possibility of a lost story, and I was excited to do a little research of my own on the matter, but I was left wanting more. I suppose that isn't the worst way to be left at the end of a book, and I am going to funnel that wanting into my To Be Read pile, and thank The Secret of Lost Things for what it gave me when I needed it.
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