Lost and Found
by Liz Byrski
Macmillan
Rose Waters is 51 years-old and had promised herself that she wouldn’t return to England, but she reasoned that, “thirty years can neutralize the most acute pain and the most paralyzing blows to confidence and self-esteem”.
Making her home in Perth, Rose had been haunted over the last thirty years because she couldn’t figure out why her dream relationship had suddenly ended. There was unfinished business in England and she turned up at Tom Stutchbury’s door after her trip from Perth.
What did Rose want to achieve after all this time? She certainly wasn’t expecting the door to be opened by his mother Dora Stutchbury, and to be told that Tom wasn’t alive to give her any answers.
Narrated in turn by Rose and Dora, Rose’s foolish fantasy turns into a mystery that looks like it isn’t going to get solved. Rose finds out that she really didn’t know much about the love of her life, and a lot of what she thought she knew may well have been stuff she made up.
While Rose questions the boundaries of reality, memory and imagination, as well as searching for answers, she stays with Dora. They develop a fantastic friendship and it turns out that the older woman has her own agenda for wanting to keep Rose in England.
Most of us have things in our past that need to be laid to rest in order to move on and bestselling Australian author Liz Byrski’s novel tenderly guides Rose, and the reader, to looking within rather than seeking answers on the outside.
Lost and Found is a novel goes down unexpected paths as it explores the joys and convolutions of love, found friendships, hidden relationships and second chances.
Lezly Herbert
