Book Review: lost boy lost girl by Peter Straub

lost boy lost girl
by Peter Straub
Random House, New York
© 2003
281p

Genre: Horror; ghost story; psychological thriller

It’s a ghost story. It’s a psychological thriller. It’s an exploration of family dynamics in a grossly dysfunctional small-town American family. A young boy disappears in the town of Millhaven, where there is a murderous pedophile on the loose, either the ghost of the one who terrorized the town a generation earlier or a copy-cat.

The boy’s mother had recently committed suicide, her motives seeming to be connected to the mysterious, empty and apparently haunted house across the alley from their own. His father is incapacitated by--if not grief exactly--a loss of the context that gave meaning to his carefully controlled life.

It is up to the boy’s uncle, a novelist who left Millhaven for New York years ago, to follow the leads left behind by the boy. By questioning the boy’s best friend who had reluctantly helped his buddy in his quest for an explanation of his mother’s suicide. By questioning his own brother about the state of mind his son had been in after finding his mother’s body, about the state of mind his wife had been in the days leading up to her suicide. And last but not least, the elderly gentleman who lived across the street from the vacant house and had witnessed the boy’s invasion of it, and who had clear memories of the days when Millhaven’s first serial-killer had roamed the local neighborhoods.

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I read and reviewed this on Joyread sometime in 2005 I believe. I know it was still on the new books shelf at the library.

And that's the last of my reviews I'm moving over from Joyread. Now I'm going to have to work harder again at putting up each day's post. No more simple copy/paste posts. LOL.

But I've used the time productively to make that and other tasks easier going forward. I've organized my book review files and in the process found over a dozen that had been all but ready to post and several dozen more in various stages of production. I organized my record keeping both on and off the computer to make taking notes while reading easier which will, I hope, encourage more reviews.

I've also been preparing for NaNoWriMo by researching for the prospective project and reading extensively on the aspects of the craft of story building with special emphasis on that which has stymied me so many times before--the middle section of the plot and its subplots. Every one of my longer stories has gotten bogged down at about the 1/3 point.

And I've been going on a round of doctor and dentist appointments with three more coming up next week. Monday morning I'm scheduled for removal of a cataract on my right eye and am anticipating being able to read more, faster and longer than I have been able for several years now.