Lost for Words by Stephanie Butland

Lost For Words by Stephanie Butland a book that will be published by Bonnier Zaffre this next April 20th has been  love at first...word!

This book is dense, cured, spectacularly interesting, a great literary work according to my point of view and surely dedicated to all the book lovers and bookworms of this world.

It was interesting to read The Lost Words also because of the informations about second-hand books market. I didn't know of a lot of it although I buy a lot of second-hand books.

Every book suggestion of Loveday here and there spectacularly important, rich and precious, and most of them...My favorite books! for sure.

When I opened the file for giving a look at this book I couldn't interrupt my reading anymore because captured by the narration and first words of Loveday.

Her words started to resonate in my mind and I felt the urgency of discovering much more of her life-story.

The narration is conducted in first person by Loveday, "interrupted" just for few pages close to the end for giving space to another central character of the book.

Loveday is the 25 years old protagonist of the tale, an acculturated shop girl of the second-hand-book owned by Archie and called The Lost Words.

The interior dialogue of Loveday will let you show the profound soul of this girl, her dreams, her fears, her expectations and her brutal skepticism of a happy life and the reason why one day she ended up to work in The Lost Words her favorite place in the world. Although young she has an important and sad past behind her but also a responsible life because she knows what it meant sufferance once.

Loveday after all doesn't want to avoid human contacts, just she thinks that with books is more easy.

More easy to communicate, more easy to find a connection than not with other human beings. And she is scared. Scared to commit the errors of a past she would want to remove although bittersweet and in the first time surely beautiful.
Scared to become like her parents.

Loveday has a profound respect, gratitude for Archie the owner of The Lost Words Book Shop because once she hired her giving her the opportunity to work in a privileged place. A place where a book can cost few pennies but also much more and where culture is also synonymy of antique, precious, delicate.

Loveday won't miss to tell us in a sort of mental-time-travel and flashbacks, what happened in the past to her family, a normal one with some problems.

A secret she would want to reveal to all her dear ones but that, being pretty discreet she doesn't for not ruin any kind of relationship. Thinking that maybe she wouldn't be loved anymore if she would tell the truth, because sometimes people don't want truth but lies.

Scared by a possible relationship with a man because of her past, she is diffident.

Nathan a poet and a man able to understand her maybe  can changes her moody idea of love although it seems that Loveday is only grateful to him for his company.

But: if someone would tell to Nathan something of her past and he would change idea about her? asks at some point to herself a scared Loveday.

From the past in fact there are some worrying signals...

Arrivals of old books of her family, mostly classics, and then a cookbook with a postcard and more.

What is it going on?

And who can be the sender of all these books?

Who knows: maybe her past boyfriend, with a sick love for her. Rob...

Maybe it is just love.

I did appreciate and I cried for sure reading the words of Loveday, in the wonderful beautiful last poem dedicated to someone she loved immensely.

I found the book plenty of wonderful values: gratitude, solidity, difficulty sorted out thanks to love, real help, sometimes not visible but always there, love for reading and love for learning, love for life, love for new starts and new beginnings, forgiveness and understanding.

I highly suggest this book to all the book lovers of this world.

It is...Fascinating. Truly fascinating and spectacular.

And as it says Loveday at the end in a poem:

"A Bookshop is not
magic, but it can
slowly heal your
heart."

I thank NetGalley and Bonnier Zaffre for this book. 



Anna Maria Polidori