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I first picked up LOST when I was 19 or so (I'm now 30). I had just finished reading Wicked and thought this would be another fun, dark fairy-tale-turned-upside-down page turner. About 2/3 of the way through the book, I gave up. The plot began to fizzle as the main character, Winnie, literally wanders in circles in London and I gave up any interest in seeing if her story would ever resolve.

A few weeks ago, I thought I'd try again.

What I think Maguire does really well: I LOVE his narrative voice. Just a few pages in, you get a picture-perfect sense of who the main character is, how she talks, how she perceives the world, and what her world looks and feels like. I remember feeling this way with Wicked, too, that Maquire just has a magical way with words and really can describe an old store front for paragraphs at a time with such detail and a strong sense of style....... if only that wasn't all that seemed to ever happen in LOST.

I remember with Wicked, too, getting to the middle of the book and feeling like Maquire was just spinning his wheels, having built up such an intricate plot and then needing to wander through Oz and Munchkinland and everywhere else before the story could pick up steam again and race to the conclusion. LOST has the same problem... but it lasts much longer. There's about 100 pages or so in the middle of the book in which nothing significant seems to ever happen. It's beautifully written, and I found it to be the perfect book for reading on the bus to and from work to pass the time, especially considering the story's atmosphere (London, in winter) was the perfect dreary counterpart to my own dreary Chicago this time of year. But unending descriptions of drizzly historic urban cities does not a FULL novel make, in my humble opinion.

That being said, I'm glad I finished the book this time. The story was not what I thought it would be, and once I got through to the end I can see how most of the book was necessary to resolving Winnie's story.

The book makes reference to Christmas Carole, Jack the Ripper, Alice in Wonderland... and several other stories of olde. In this particular context, though, it all felt a bit stretched and jumbled. Like so many other reviewers, I felt LOST myself as I worked my way through the story. Even at its close, I feel like maybe I missed something, or that now that I've finished it I need to start over from the beginning to put the pieces back together now that I've seen the bigger picture.

But I don't think I will.