Lost & Found
Ratings10
Average rating3.9
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A “profound and beautiful” (Marilynne Robinson) account of joy and sorrow from one of the great writers of our time, The New Yorker’s Kathryn Schulz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize “I will stake my reputation on you being blown away by Lost & Found.”—Anne Lamott, author of Dusk, Night, Dawn and Bird by Bird LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL One spring morning, Kathryn Schulz went to lunch with a stranger and fell in love. Having spent years looking for the right relationship, she was dazzled by how swiftly everything changed when she finally met her future wife. But as the two of them began building a life together, Schulz’s beloved father—a charming, brilliant, absentminded Jewish refugee—went into the hospital with a minor heart condition and never came out. Newly in love yet also newly bereft, Schulz was left contending simultaneously with wild joy and terrible grief. Those twin experiences form the heart of Lost & Found, a profound meditation on the families that make us and the families we make. But Schulz’s book also explores how disappearance and discovery shape us all. On average, we each lose two hundred thousand objects over our lifetime, and Schulz brilliantly illuminates the relationship between those everyday losses and our most devastating ones. Likewise, she explores the importance of seeking, whether for ancient ruins or new ideas, friends, faith, meaning, or love. The resulting book is part memoir, part guidebook to sustaining wonder and gratitude even in the face of loss and grief. A staff writer at The New Yorker and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Schulz writes with curiosity, tenderness, and humor about the connections between joy and sorrow—and between us all.
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If you want a memoir that doubles as philosophical commentary, Schulz is the way to go. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about this book because memoirs have the capacity to be very hit or miss for me, but I was pleasantly surprised by Schulz's ability to weave her own memoir with broader discussions and contemplations. Ok Schulz, you reeled me in!
This was a book club read for me, and I'm grateful to have read it. Numerous passages were so moving and insightful that I saved them on my Kindle and now my phone. She begins with the slow and painful loss of her father (and also the loss of many small things, like keys and wallets, which was funny and truthful) and ends with finding her partner and wife. Schultz is a beautiful writer, and feel as though I was at her wedding because I can see it so clearly in my mind's eye.
I did not like so much her ardent atheism, the defense of which seemed excessive and distracting to this non-atheist. But I appreciate how she writes of her wife's faith with such respect. I also did wish for the middle to move along a bit more quickly. There were places where I had to make myself finish the chapter, or I would just skim to the end of it, because her lengthy discussions got slow for me. Perhaps a more patient reader would just bathe in the words and the ideas.
All in all, a lovely piece with moments of brilliance.
The word “gorgeous” seems to be thrown around somewhat casually in book reviews, but the occasion of finishing Lost & Found calls for its use.
This book is most of all gorgeous, but also charming, affecting, informative, varied, and a true testament to the power of vulnerability in writing.
Schulz has a knack for seamlessly interweaving the most personal of details with complex scientific facts and the history of Mt. Olympus. While this is exciting and interesting for the most part, it felt a bit overdone and as though its exemplifying the law of diminishing returns towards the end.
There were countless moments while I was reading this that I just had to stop and take a breath to fully engage with the text. I was moved by the at once complex and simple observations Schulz makes of the ebbs and flows of loss and love.
