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Everything Lost, Everything Found
A gorgeously written, immersive and deeply moving novel about the stories that shape us and the memories that ensnare us.
In 1929, young Jack travels with his parents to Henry Ford's rubber-tree plantation in the Brazilian Amazon. In this lushly beautiful but dangerous place, he loses his much-loved mother to a horrific accident. This has terrible repercussions for his family, and Jack is eventually forced into the jungle to search for his absent father.
Seven decades later, living in the heart of Michigan's rust belt on the cusp of a new millennium, Jack faces the challenges of old age, including the gradual loss of his wife of fifty years, whose memory is disappearing even as Jack's own memories insistently resurface to invade and colonise his present.
Everything Lost, Everything Found, from master storyteller Matthew Hooton, is haunting, tender and poignant, a rich and emotional novel about loss, grief and memory, and how the past never truly leaves us.
In 1929, young Jack travels with his parents to Henry Ford's rubber-tree plantation in the Brazilian Amazon. In this lushly beautiful but dangerous place, he loses his much-loved mother to a horrific accident. This has terrible repercussions for his family, and Jack is eventually forced into the jungle to search for his absent father.
Seven decades later, living in the heart of Michigan's rust belt on the cusp of a new millennium, Jack faces the challenges of old age, including the gradual loss of his wife of fifty years, whose memory is disappearing even as Jack's own memories insistently resurface to invade and colonise his present.
Everything Lost, Everything Found, from master storyteller Matthew Hooton, is haunting, tender and poignant, a rich and emotional novel about loss, grief and memory, and how the past never truly leaves us.
258 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 10, 2026
A deeply moving and immersive story, exploring memory, grief and loss, as well as the stories and experiences that shape us.
‘…my secrets lived solely in the ageing box of my memory.’
Told from the perspective of Jack, across his lifetime including the traumatic death of his mother, his time as a child at Fordlandia the rubber-tree plantation in the Brazilian Amazon, his search for his absent father, reflections on his experiences throughout life, through to his old age and navigating the gradual loss of his wife.
‘I am ashamed to say that this didn’t bother me as much as it should have at the time. I was a product of my environment, but that’s not much of an excuse, and it does nothing to extinguish the coal of shame that still burns in my gut.’
Matthew Hooton's writing had me immersed in the jungle, gasping out loud, weeping at times and reflecting on my own memories and experiences in life.
‘I had that feeling of anger and frustration that comes with dropping a dish or glass and knowing that the next half-hour will be spent cleaning up one’s own carelessness—-only multiply the regret by about the number of decades I’ve been alive.’
4.5 stars (rounded up)
‘…my secrets lived solely in the ageing box of my memory.’
Told from the perspective of Jack, across his lifetime including the traumatic death of his mother, his time as a child at Fordlandia the rubber-tree plantation in the Brazilian Amazon, his search for his absent father, reflections on his experiences throughout life, through to his old age and navigating the gradual loss of his wife.
‘I am ashamed to say that this didn’t bother me as much as it should have at the time. I was a product of my environment, but that’s not much of an excuse, and it does nothing to extinguish the coal of shame that still burns in my gut.’
Matthew Hooton's writing had me immersed in the jungle, gasping out loud, weeping at times and reflecting on my own memories and experiences in life.
‘I had that feeling of anger and frustration that comes with dropping a dish or glass and knowing that the next half-hour will be spent cleaning up one’s own carelessness—-only multiply the regret by about the number of decades I’ve been alive.’
4.5 stars (rounded up)
July 20, 2025
The year is 1999 and Jack, along with his wife is slowly losing his battle with time. His wife is already in hospice. Having beaten cancer her body and mind is failing from the effort. Now after a nasty fall Jack fears that he will soon join her. His daughter wants him to move in with her, but Jack believes he will be a burden and lose his independence.
As Jack visits his wife, she is often asleep and he finds himself pondering, recalling his extraordinary traumatic childhood, where most of the narrative takes place.
In 1929 twelve-year-old Jack moved, with his father and mother, from Michigan to Henry Ford’s failed settlement in Brazil. This novel is worth reading just to find out about “Fordlandia” and Ford’s attempt to wrest the rubber trade away from the British by building a puritan American town and rubber plantation in the heart of a jungle. A plan that looking at it now in hindsight was doomed from the very beginning. I must admit that I know very little about Henry Ford and Hooton, while not demonizing him, certainly does not paint him in a favourable light. From his strict code of morality enforced on the people of Fordlandia by his own private agents, to atrocious working conditions, antisemitism and connections to Hitler. It is a novel that has made me want to find out more about Ford and his failed utopian settlement.
Jack’s initial excitement to explore an almost alien world so different from his home is dramatically quashed when his beloved mother is killed by a caiman. He then loses his father who spends almost every waking moment in search of the crocodile who stole his wife.
I found the central theme of this novel to be about loss and how life moves on never stopping still. The loss of a life partner, the loss of your health, the loss of entire towns and industry. This theme is explored on a personal level with Jack. Do we ever truly recover from some losses? Do our memories sometimes trap us in the past? The jungle of Jack’s twelve-year-old self has now been replaced by a jungle of crumbling concrete and brick from a lost automobile industry and his life is crumbling along with it. But we carry on, life is fleeting and never stops still.
A beautifully written wonderful novel. I will be checking out his other books now. :-)
As Jack visits his wife, she is often asleep and he finds himself pondering, recalling his extraordinary traumatic childhood, where most of the narrative takes place.
In 1929 twelve-year-old Jack moved, with his father and mother, from Michigan to Henry Ford’s failed settlement in Brazil. This novel is worth reading just to find out about “Fordlandia” and Ford’s attempt to wrest the rubber trade away from the British by building a puritan American town and rubber plantation in the heart of a jungle. A plan that looking at it now in hindsight was doomed from the very beginning. I must admit that I know very little about Henry Ford and Hooton, while not demonizing him, certainly does not paint him in a favourable light. From his strict code of morality enforced on the people of Fordlandia by his own private agents, to atrocious working conditions, antisemitism and connections to Hitler. It is a novel that has made me want to find out more about Ford and his failed utopian settlement.
Jack’s initial excitement to explore an almost alien world so different from his home is dramatically quashed when his beloved mother is killed by a caiman. He then loses his father who spends almost every waking moment in search of the crocodile who stole his wife.
I found the central theme of this novel to be about loss and how life moves on never stopping still. The loss of a life partner, the loss of your health, the loss of entire towns and industry. This theme is explored on a personal level with Jack. Do we ever truly recover from some losses? Do our memories sometimes trap us in the past? The jungle of Jack’s twelve-year-old self has now been replaced by a jungle of crumbling concrete and brick from a lost automobile industry and his life is crumbling along with it. But we carry on, life is fleeting and never stops still.
A beautifully written wonderful novel. I will be checking out his other books now. :-)
July 16, 2025
Successor to Typhoon Kingdom (2019) which I chose as a Favourite Book of the Year when I read and reviewed it in 2023, Everything Lost, Everything Found by Matthew Hooton is a story of imperial occupation and colonisation unlike any I have read before.
Set at the turn of the millennium and narrated in the first person, Everything Lost, Everything Found is the story of an ageing man called Jack in Muskinaw, Michigan. He is negotiating the last period of his very long life. His wife, Grace, having seen off cancer just a short time ago, is now in palliative care where her dementia comes and goes. In the home they have shared for decades, Jack is having to face up to his own encroaching frailty and the looming loss of independence and the need to sort out his fractured relationship with his daughter Jess. He's in conflict with Jess because of decisions he made when she split from Simon, her Ex.
This brief summary might suggest that Jack is an ordinary man, an American citizen now in retirement from his years as a plumber in a rustbelt city. But Jack has had an extraordinarily traumatic childhood which has shaped his entire life even though his family knows very little about it. How could they? How could they possibly imagine a childhood in Fordlandia, Henry Ford's grand colonial enterprise in the Amazon rainforest?
Wikipedia tells us that Fordlandia...
In effect, Fordlandia was an American colony under occupation by a population sent there from the US.
Jack goes to this swathe of land carved from the Amazon rainforest with his parents.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/07/16/e...
Set at the turn of the millennium and narrated in the first person, Everything Lost, Everything Found is the story of an ageing man called Jack in Muskinaw, Michigan. He is negotiating the last period of his very long life. His wife, Grace, having seen off cancer just a short time ago, is now in palliative care where her dementia comes and goes. In the home they have shared for decades, Jack is having to face up to his own encroaching frailty and the looming loss of independence and the need to sort out his fractured relationship with his daughter Jess. He's in conflict with Jess because of decisions he made when she split from Simon, her Ex.
This brief summary might suggest that Jack is an ordinary man, an American citizen now in retirement from his years as a plumber in a rustbelt city. But Jack has had an extraordinarily traumatic childhood which has shaped his entire life even though his family knows very little about it. How could they? How could they possibly imagine a childhood in Fordlandia, Henry Ford's grand colonial enterprise in the Amazon rainforest?
Wikipedia tells us that Fordlandia...
... was established by American industrialist Henry Ford in the Amazon Rainforest in 1928 as a prefabricated industrial town intended to be inhabited by 10,000 people to secure a source of cultivated rubber for the automobile manufacturing operations of the Ford Motor Company in the United States. Ford had negotiated a deal with the Brazilian government granting him a concession of 10,000 sq km (3,900 sq mi) of land on the banks of the Rio Tapajós near the city of Santarém, Brazil, in exchange for a 9% share in the profits generated. Ford's project failed, and the city was abandoned in 1934.
In effect, Fordlandia was an American colony under occupation by a population sent there from the US.
Jack goes to this swathe of land carved from the Amazon rainforest with his parents.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/07/16/e...
April 8, 2025
A very busy book - capturing the life of Jack, a man who spent time as a child in the Amazon jungle, and his later life as a husband and father.
The depictions of Fordlandia and the history behind the settlement; the dangers that existed (flora, fauna and man), and relationships (human and countries) made for interesting reading.
Thanks to publisher for ARC
3.5 stars
The depictions of Fordlandia and the history behind the settlement; the dangers that existed (flora, fauna and man), and relationships (human and countries) made for interesting reading.
Thanks to publisher for ARC
3.5 stars
August 15, 2025
Are there more books being published about the slide into dementia and confusion, or it just that I perceive it that way because of my own fears? Writer and academic Matthew Hooton is rather too young to be facing this situation himself, but he captures well the slipperiness of memory in this beautifully written book.
If you're looking up 'Matthew Hooton' to find out more about him, you'll find that unfortunately for him, he shares his name with a former National Party politician from New Zealand. But there's a certain irony in that because Jack, the narrator of Everything lost, Everything found also shares a name with another Jack in Henry Ford's rubber plantation in the Brazilian Amazon, where he travelled with his parents in 1929.
There are two threads to this book. One is Jack's memories of Fordlandia in Brazil, a cookie-cutter American suburb transplanted into the Brazilian jungle, under the control of the morality agents charged with carrying out Henry Ford's vision for a colonial outpost to establish rubber plantations in the jungle, while gradually easing out reliance on native rubber-gatherers. The second thread is that of Jack's life in Michigan, in what is now a deserted Ford Factory town, as his wife Gracie is sliding into dementia and a slow death with cancer.
One of the things that really impresses me about Hooton's writing is the way that he is able to emotionally inhabit someone that he clearly is not: a Korean comfort woman in his earlier book, Typhoon Kingdom, and an old man here. His characters have an authenticity and layers of complexity, and their dialogue and tone is distinctive and convincing.
The two story lines become increasingly intertwined, as Jack himself becomes more addled, and as the past colonizes the present, not unlike the colonization attempt of Fordlandia. Jack's narrative voice is comfortable and engaging, and as a reader you want things to be better for him.
I enjoyed the beauty of the descriptions, the poignancy of loss and grief, and the sheer humanness of it all.
For my complete review, please visit:
https://residentjudge.com/2025/08/15/...
If you're looking up 'Matthew Hooton' to find out more about him, you'll find that unfortunately for him, he shares his name with a former National Party politician from New Zealand. But there's a certain irony in that because Jack, the narrator of Everything lost, Everything found also shares a name with another Jack in Henry Ford's rubber plantation in the Brazilian Amazon, where he travelled with his parents in 1929.
There are two threads to this book. One is Jack's memories of Fordlandia in Brazil, a cookie-cutter American suburb transplanted into the Brazilian jungle, under the control of the morality agents charged with carrying out Henry Ford's vision for a colonial outpost to establish rubber plantations in the jungle, while gradually easing out reliance on native rubber-gatherers. The second thread is that of Jack's life in Michigan, in what is now a deserted Ford Factory town, as his wife Gracie is sliding into dementia and a slow death with cancer.
One of the things that really impresses me about Hooton's writing is the way that he is able to emotionally inhabit someone that he clearly is not: a Korean comfort woman in his earlier book, Typhoon Kingdom, and an old man here. His characters have an authenticity and layers of complexity, and their dialogue and tone is distinctive and convincing.
The two story lines become increasingly intertwined, as Jack himself becomes more addled, and as the past colonizes the present, not unlike the colonization attempt of Fordlandia. Jack's narrative voice is comfortable and engaging, and as a reader you want things to be better for him.
I enjoyed the beauty of the descriptions, the poignancy of loss and grief, and the sheer humanness of it all.
For my complete review, please visit:
https://residentjudge.com/2025/08/15/...
August 3, 2025
This is a gorgeous, heart wrenching book, that bravely traverses vast spaces - through time, across generations and into spectacular untouched terrains. It is genre-defying : in one respect, it is a literary novel exploring the impact of ageing on family relationships, and the power of forgiveness in the face of fear. But it is also deeply mired in magical realism, unveiling the beauty and horror of the Brazilian jungle when plundered by ignorant industrialists. And there is a heavy dose of historical fiction mixed in as well. We flit between past and present, not just learning about the main character’s unorthodox childhood, but re-living it through memories triggered by his wife’s imminent death. Languid then livid, mournful then merry, sweet then so very sad…take a beautiful journey with this book along a sparkling rippling river, but watch out for piranhas!
August 8, 2025
Beautifully written, full of rich, evocative prose that needs to be lingered over; it is not a book to read in a hurry. The storyline moves between childhood memories of the Amazonian jungle and the last months of a couple’s lives together. Hooten’s descriptions of the physical environment of the Amazonian jungle are as visceral as his descriptions of aging and loss. I was deeply moved by it.
August 2, 2025
1.5/5
March 20, 2026
A well written book that was a bit repetitive and didn’t seem to go anywhere but enjoyable nonetheless.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews