Tournament of Books discussion

location to discuss Lost Children.. inclusion in the short list, relitigate the summer TOB, and have general thoughts on the book

Refugees, lost children, memory, family...Personal connections abound - sound capture, archival boxes, Steven Feld, marriage, so much that goes deep and I'll be thinking about for some time.

I typed up quite a few quotations in my review but I really loved this book.

And then I started seeing the reviews about her disappearing the native population and started second guessing myself....

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "Refugees, lost children, memory, family...Personal connections abound - sound capture, archival boxes, Steven Feld, marriage, so much that goes deep and I'll be thinking about for some time.

I ty..."

Thanks for sharing your review - great quotes! I enjoyed listening to the audio version of this one, but the downside of that format is not being able to capture and remember the exceptional lines like these.

And yes, unfortunately our favorite books can always be taken down a notch by bad reviews, especially when the issues are significant.

Did you also read Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions? I thought it was a great complement to LCA.

Lauren wrote: "Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "Refugees, lost children, memory, family...Personal connections abound - sound capture, archival boxes, Steven Feld, marriage, so much that goes deep and I'll be thinkin..."

I think the negative reviews felt she ignored the fact of living breathing indigenous peoples but I think she was attempting to acknowledge the absence of them in their original spaces. I still can't really take issue with what I thought her intentions were.

I haven't read the essay collection but would like to!

Lauren wrote: "Did you also read Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions? I thought it was a great complement to LCA."

I just read it this last weekend. Lost Children Archive was already my favourite read of the year and I'm glad I read the essay after the novel. They are both amazing bits of work written in two different languages and the essay informs and inspires the novel.

If Luiselli doesn't take the Rooster, I will be shocked.

This was a spectacular book, I thought - so many of the books that seem like "multimedia experiences" often come across as gimmicky, but something about the insight of both narrators felt very real.

Kyle wrote: "This was a spectacular book, I thought - so many of the books that seem like "multimedia experiences" often come across as gimmicky, but something about the insight of both narrators felt very real."

I enjoyed the first half of the book's narration a bit more than the second, but I agree that it all worked well overall, avoiding the gimmicky feeling. I look forward to digging into this again with some new judges. Should we assume that it will not be paired with Trust Exercise in the first round? That would probably create too much deja vu for those of us who attended Camp ToB. ;)

I read this when it was first published and I loved it. However, it was getting some pretty terrible reviews at the time. I think it is very skilfully written and very much underrated.