Lost & Found - A Memoir by Kathryn Schulz

 Lost & Found - A Memoir by Kathryn Schulz
[Review]

Publisher: PICADOR
Page Length: 256
Hardback Edition: £14.99
Release Date: 28.04.22

Synopsis

'An extraordinary gift of a book, a tender, searching meditation on love and loss and what it means to be human. I wept at it, laughed with it, was entirely fascinated by it. I emerged feeling a little as if the world around me had been made anew.' – Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk and Vesper Flights

Eighteen months before Kathryn Schulz’s beloved father died, she met the woman she would marry. In Lost & Found, she weaves the stories of those relationships into a brilliant exploration of how all our lives are shaped by loss and discovery - from the maddening disappearance of everyday objects to the sweeping devastations of war, pandemic, and natural disaster; from finding new planets to falling in love.

Three very different American families form the heart of Lost & Found: the one that made Schulz’s father, a charming, brilliant, absentminded Jewish refugee; the one that made her partner, an equally brilliant farmer’s daughter and devout Christian; and the one she herself makes through marriage. But Schulz is also attentive to other, more universal kinds of conjunction: how private happiness can coexist with global catastrophe, how we get irritated with those we adore, how love and loss are themselves unavoidably inseparable. The resulting book is part memoir, part guidebook to living in a world that is simultaneously full of wonder and joy and wretchedness and suffering - a world that always demands both our gratitude and our grief.

A staff writer at the New Yorker and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Kathryn Schulz writes with curiosity, tenderness, erudition, and wit about our finite yet infinitely complicated lives. Crafted with the emotional clarity of C. S. Lewis and the intellectual force of Susan Sontag, Lost & Found is an uncommon book about common experiences.

Purchase Link
Waterstones|WHSmith

Review

Typically, I don't read memoirs but after seeing the beautiful cover and the synopsis, I thought that this may just be the perfect memoir for me. 

This memoir is written like an eloquent poem which captures Kathryn's memories beautifully. This book is written in three parts, each as interesting as one another and is based on the title of the book. Each part covers how as humans we deal and approach things that we have lost, and how we go about finding and the "&" that combines things together.

This book really dives into the frustration that we feel as existential beings that have lost something and that in the end we lose everything, including the ones we treasure the most. 

We discover that Kathryn in the months before losing her father, met the woman of her dreams and how love can help carry you through the painful process of grief. 

You discover that amidst all the pain, Kathryn goes on to build a happy life with her wife including a wedding, a new home and eventually an addition to the family.

If you enjoy memoirs, then this one is profoundly moving and really opens your eyes to what it really means to be human.

About The Author

Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of Being Wrong. She won a National Magazine Award and a Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for 'The Really Big One', an article about seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest. Her TED talks have been hugely popular: 'Don't Regret Regret' (2.5m views) and 'On being Wrong' (5m views). Lost & Found grew out of 'When Things Go Missing', which was originally published in the New Yorker and later anthologized in The Best American Essays. She lives with her family in Maryland.

Follow Kathryn Schulz on Twitter: @kathrynschulz