Several years ago I was reading a book on writing. I used to do that rather a lot. This particular book had a series of exercises in it. A writing book that tells you to actually do something is the best kind in my experience. One of the exercises was to tell a story from the point of view of the villain, to make the villain a sympathetic character. I wrote a story about The Wicked Witch of the West. As is the case of many writers such as I myself, I did not follow through on this story and make a novel out of it. Someone did though, and Wicked has been making history ever since.
Lost is another book by Gregory Maguire with elements lifted freely from other sources. Set in the Present, this story has elements of A Christmas Carol, Peter Pan, Dracula, and Alice In Wonderland given starring roles.
Listening to the audio book version is a bit of fun. The story has an American hero, but is mostly set in London. Clearly the writer has strong English leanings as well, since our ‘American’ talks about such things as Semi-Detached houses in Massachusetts and Proper this and Proper that. Or maybe I just got a hold of a British Translation. There is plenty of British English used here and the story quickly enough hops the pond and lands in the Hampton district of London.
The reader, Jenny Sterlin, has a wonderful deep British accent and she does a fine job of dropping her pitch an octave or two for the men in the story. But every time she speaks for the hero, she puts on a British accent that isn’t quite right. It is, in fact, downright baffling. Since I like to think of myself as a bit of an expert of English accents of one sort or another, I kept trying to place it. Then it struck me, she wasn’t putting on an English accent, this was her idea of an American accent. I wonder if I sound as ridiculous to British speakers when I speak Cockney as this woman sounds to me. I guess I am just spoiled by Hugh Laurie’s dead on perfect American accent on House.
The story in Lost is a rambling tale of an American writer in search of, well, who know what she is in search of? She is writing a book, or not writing a book. She is being haunted by a ghost in her Cousin’s London flat, or maybe not. She is mad as a hatter, or sane as a Saint. The story is a ghost story/mystery/Gothic romance/horror/adventure. As Zeppo told Groucho-You said a lot of stuff here that I didn’t think was very important.
There are bits of Peter Pan and Dracula sprinkled here and there for no apparent reason. There is a love affair that seems to have been an accident. There is the possibility of Jack of The Ripping hiding in a cat. There was a tragedy without any forwarding that any tragic was going to happen, thus making it just one more pointless event. The Ghost shows up near the end and plays against type by being a poor peasant girl, or will she turn out to be Joan of Arc? Will it really matter much in either case? The book just sort of stops rather ending, with life, such as it is, going on.
I do love the sound of the reader’s voice though and will have to look for more books by Jenny Sterlin. Lost, well, it lost me.
