Lost

This audiobook would be lost without Jenny Sterlin. The title unintentionally reflects a plot that meanders and an abundance of allusions that threaten to become a self-indulgent literary ramble. But Sterlin makes us care about Winifred, a Boston writer who is bewildered by her next book and her future. She's further perplexed when she goes to visit her London cousin, for whom she has complicated feelings, and finds he has disappeared. Sterlin indulges this character, gives us keys to her sensibilities, and thereby centers the book. Delivering the delight of literary worlds from Barre to Dickens, she plays up the humor of the novel and gives us a proper chill when it evolves into a ghost story. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

September 10, 2001
Before he broke onto the adult bestseller lists with his irreverent interpretations of the Cinderella story (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister) and the Wizard of Oz (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West), Maguire wrote children's books with titles like Six Haunted Hairdos, Seven Spiders Spinning
and Four Stupid Cupids. His latest is a virtual literary paella of adult and children's fantasies: Jack the Ripper, A Christmas Carol, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Exorcist—
even a wafting glimpse of Dracula. The result is a deftly written, compulsively readable modern-day ghost story that easily elicits suspension of disbelief. American writer Winifred Rudge, whose mass market book about astrology has been far more successful than her fiction, is in London to research a novel linking Jack the Ripper to the house in Hampstead where her own great-great-grandfather—rumored to be the model for Ebenezer Scrooge—lived. But as Winifred discovers, there is no evidence that the Ripper ever visited Hampstead, let alone buried one of his victims inside the chimney of a house there, and his presence in the story is a red herring. Much more interesting is the mysterious disappearance of Winnie's cousin, John Comestor, the latest resident of the family house. Moreover, something is making an infernal racket inside the chimney, and soon there are other bizarre manifestations of some unseen force. A Dickensian assortment of neighbors (one dotty lady is called Mrs. Maddingly) variously obfuscate and hint at strange events. Maguire's prose is both jaunty and scary; he knows how to mix spooky ingredients with contemporary situations. By the time a spirit called Gervasa begins to speak through Winnie, readers will be hooked.

December 24, 2007
Maguire's brilliantly imaginative tale of a novelist haunted by the unsettled spirits of Jack the Ripper, Ebenezer Scrooge and her very own past is brought to life by narrator Jenny Sterlin. An experienced children's fiction narrator, Sterlin brings an air of the fantastic and otherworldly to this supernatural tale. With her classically trained British accent the story becomes a fairy tale of sorts. Sterlin's superb reading guides listeners through the gloomy atmosphere of Maguire's London. With a large cast of murky and mysterious Londoners to voice, Sterlin provides a variety of grainy dialects and accents that help define each individually. Sterlin knows how to get and hold one's attention, and her sharp and often menacing tone demands the audience's consideration at every crucial and thrilling plot twist. Playing this audiobook with the lights down low on a blustery winter night is sure to spark the imaginations of listeners of all ages. A Harper paperback (Reviews, Sept. 10, 2001).