Liz Byrski’s twelfth novel, Lost and Found, feels like the perfect bookend to her memoir, Remember Me, published in 2000. Described as “true story of love lost and found”, the book charted Liz’s own reunion with a boyfriend whom she had not seen since she was eighteen, some thirty-seven years later, and the way that such a meeting can force reflection on the path that life has taken in order to get there.
In Lost and Found, Rose Walters faces a similar situation when a vivid dream about past boyfriend, Tom Stutchbury, causes her to uproot herself and return to the England of her youth in order to find him, and find answers as to why he ended things with her decades earlier.
At 51, Rose has enjoyed a successful career in politics and has penned numerous articles for the magazine Feminist International. She wonders if Tom might have been the start of her interest in more left wing political allegiances, and what he would make of the changes in her. Yet fear – and a busy schedule – delay her journey, and when she arrives in Rye it is Tom’s mother Dora she is met with, rather than the man himself, who passed away around the time that Rose had her premonition-like dream.
However, something continues to draw the women to each other, and Dora (herself having been well-known in English politics), invites Rose to stay with her and to look through some journals and letters of Tom’s which she has been keeping in the attic. Rose is not only looking for the reason why Tom broke things off with her, but also longs to know if Tom really loved her. It struck me as curious, however, that she never questioned her own love for him in return, and as the narrative slowly meditated on the nature of the impact the people in our lives can have on future directions we may take, it seemed more and more the case that Tom was an important catalyst for some of the decisions Rose would later make about her career, but also that he might have hindered her success, being an opinionated type of person prone to getting his own way. He was also, I should mention, a considerable number of years older than Rose, and they met whilst staging a production of the Theban Plays. He was Oedipus, and she, his on stage daughter Antigone.
The novel uses the first person point of view, accounting from both Rose and Dora’s points of view the evolution of their relationship – first strangers, then friends united by their grief, then biographer and subject, and finally, a sort of de facto mother and daughter bond forms, in which Rose takes on the role of carer. Other points of view, including Dora’s close friend and colleague from Australia, Chris and Dora’s lifelong friend, Molly, occasionally crop up – the effect is as if you are watching a documentary with interviews interspersed throughout.
Much of the narrative feels fairly passive as a result, but this may also be due to the fact that this is a novel about the past, and all of the characters are reflecting on significant events that took place in the 1960s or earlier. Tom’s voice is also included in the form of his letters and diaries, which are included in one of Rose’s chapters as she reads them. At times, this layering of the years is a little disorienting, as Rose in 1996 reads letters between Dora and Tom largely relating to events in 1992 but also diary entries written in 1992 about Rose and Tom’s meeting in 1964. Frustratingly for Rose, reading these documents only raises more questions.
Lost and Found might be described as a gentle novel and this is certainly the case when it comes to its style. Themes of nostalgia and friendship dominate the text, but rather than focussing on what could have been for Rose and Tom, the text quickly draws readers to the conclusion that Rose’s relationships with the women in her life – Chris, daughter Nicky, and now Dora – have been some of the most significant. (Her ex-husband, and father of her daughter, might not even be named.) Likewise, Dora reflects on the roles that the women she has known have played in her life, and continue to play now that she is older – including a number of intergenerational friendships with the daughters of her friends and the women she has met through Tom. Though grief is the emotion that brings Rose and Dora together, their meeting is presented as something hopeful and almost fated, with Rose somewhat skeptically coming to the conclusion that the dream she has had may have coincided with the moment of Tom’s passing, and wondering if he meant for her to come to see Dora, rather than to be with him. But while gentleness and hope may carry readers through the story, be warned that there are some moments of darkness in the plot as well, which some readers may find upsetting.
While not necessarily the most hilarious or pacy of Byrski’s novels, Lost and Found does carry on the conversations about the lives of women and their stories that have been begun in earlier books, and it is clear to see why she is beloved by so many readers. This one is more of a meditation on memory, loyalty, personal growth and love, and might feel like a warm hug of a novel if picked up when in the right mood. Read this one if you love cosy novels like Before the Coffee Gets Cold, or if you loved Remember Me.
THREE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Lost and Found by Liz Byrski is available from Pan Macmillan Australia. Find a copy at your local bookstore HERE.
