Lost and Wanted by Nell Freudenberger

This was one of those books that didn't really move me one way or the other. It wasn't a bad read, but then again it wasn't riveting and the storyline just jogged along for the few days it took me to read it.

I never like to be mean about books, especially when authors have clearly put so much effort in, but it's just a fact of life that some books resonate with you and some books don't. I think the underlying problem I had with this book was that the main character, Helen, didn't seem very authentic. Helen is a top level scientist working in theoretical physics, and she holds a position as a Professor at MIT, but the author, Nell Freudenberger, is not a scientist and had to learn everything she writes about from scratch. To be fair, she has obviously learnt a great deal, as the book is peppered with explanations of scientific research, but it did seem a little forced at times.

Anyway, scientist Helen's best friend Charlie had recently died after suffering with Lupus for the previous eight years, and despite not having spoken for over a year, we have to understand that they were very close. Shortly after Charlie's death Helen starts receiving text messages sent from Charlie's phone, and her husband says the phone has mysteriously disappeared. This gives us the twist to the story, as Helen is all about the laws of the universe, and now she is being presented with events that make no scientific sense.

Helen has a young son, Jack, who was conceived by donor, and Charlie's death means that her daughter Simmi, who is a year or two older, is also left with just one parent. Charlie's husband reveals that in the end she took her own life rather that struggle on with her illness, and her parents assume he took a part in this, even though he insists he didn't. The only way he can make Charlie's parents believe him is to find the partly written e-mail lodged on her missing phone.

So you see, we have lots of scope for a good read here, and now I'm starting to wonder why I didn't get caught up in it, but somehow it just didn't hit the spot for me. Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind.

Comments

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