Tender, funny and memorable, Book of Lost Threads is a story about love and loss, parents and children, hope, faith and the value of simple kindness. Moss has run away from Melbourne to Opportunity on the trail of a man she knows only by name.
But her arrival sets in train events that disturb the long-held secrets of three of the town's inhabitants: Finn, a brilliant mathematician, who has become a recluse; Lily Pargetter, eighty-three-year-old knitter of tea cosies; and Sandy, the town buffoon, who dreams of a Great Galah. It is only as Moss, Finn, Lily and Sandy develop unlikely friendships that they find a way to lay their sorrows to rest and knit together the threads that will restore them to life.
If you loved The Guernsey Literary + Potato Peel Pie Society, you'll love The Book of Lost Threads.
heart-warming debut novel
“Moss began softly at first, her voice slowly swelling…Pure silver sound vibrated the dust motes in Mrs Pargetter’s front room, floated into the frosty night air and out into the streets of the tired little town. Helen Porter, walking her dog, felt a prickling along her spine. Cocky Benson, in a drunken stupor, brushed aside the tears that wet his corroded cheeks, and Sharon Simpson stopped painting her toenails and lifted her head to listen. Merv Randall, pausing as he wiped down the bar, briefly and wonderfully experienced the numinous. ‘You would of swore it was an angel singing,’ he told his customers the next day.”
Book of Lost Threads is the first novel by Australian author, Tess Evans. When Moss (Miranda Ophelia Sinclair) arrives in the declining Victorian town of Opportunity and knocks on Finn’s door, she is the catalyst for great changes in the lives of several of the townspeople. Finn (Michael Finbar Clancy) is a reclusive mathematician plagued by guilt and remorse. His eighty-three year old neighbour, Mrs Lily Pargetter does work for the United Nations to ease her broken heart. Lily’s nephew, Sandy (George Sandilands Jr) has a grand plan to save the town of Opportunity from fading away by building a Great Galah. It takes some time for them to acknowledge that all four of them are “haunted by spirits who need a resting place”
Evans gives the reader multi-faceted, appealing characters, some quite familiar, some a little quirky and her depiction of the Victorian country town is faultless, She incorporates many diverse elements in her tale: hundreds of tea cosies, a series of dogs named Errol Flynn, a prostitute known only as Amber Lee, a Kenyan intern at the United Nations with a kind heart and a talent for lateral thinking, a still-born baby unnamed for over sixty years, a Kosovan refugee, a landscape architect looking for a project, a pair of lesbian mothers, a holiday snap from Blackpool pier, a hotel pioneer, and some wise and caring Benedictine monks.
Evans treats the reader to some beautiful descriptive prose: ”Finn had the hunched shoulders of a man uncomfortable with his height; with his long thin legs and narrow face he looked for all the world like an apologetic stork” and “The cemetery was bristling with tombstones, which grew from the earth like rows of grey teeth, some carious and crooked with age, others straight and perfectly aligned” and “Christmas Eve was hot and oppressive. The citizens of Opportunity were becalmed on a sea of heat” are just a few examples.
This heart-warming debut novel is perfectly titled: threads of people’s lives, some longer, some just snippets, are wound together into a cohesive whole that is a delight to read. Readers will look forward to the second novel by this talented author, The Memory Tree.
Marianne, 14/12/2014
