Lost Property by Helen Paris

I hoped this would be an inspiring story of a lost outsider, a bit of an oddball, finding themselves – something like Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Simone (which I loved). It started pretty well before falling flat for me and then I found myself skimming pages to get to the end after about 50%.

Dot Watson was initially an intriguing character, a bit of a jobsworth but in an endearing way. I loved her self-imposed uniform. I had also never heard/thought of the TfL (Transport for London) Lost Property Office and there is something both romantic and sad about an underground warehouse full of lost things. It made me wonder what happened to the black bobble hat I dropped on the bus in my city earlier this year.

Dot’s borderline pathological attachment to returning lost items stems from her grief over losing her father (many years previously), but she is also processing her mother’s recent move into a care facility due to her dementia and tension with her sister. The novel follows her slow unravelling of the complicated history of her family.

I never really connected to Dot in the way I wanted to. Part of the problem is that I could never put my finger on how old she is meant to be. She’s definitely an “old soul” which makes her feel I think older than her years. Her younger sister, who took the traditional marriage path as soon as she could, has children that are tween-teenaged… So I think she’s meant to be in her forties? Not being sure on this detail made it hard for me to get a proper handle on her.

The story also really dragged at times. Around half way, after three nights in a row of repetitive, tedious, absinthe fueled hallucinations I rapidly lost interest. It never really got going after that.

The present day handling of her mothers dementia felt well done, but I don’t think the balance was right in childhood recollections of the parents. The mother was essentially absent in Dot’s memory, I was never clear what their relationship really was because of the focus on the father, which created a chasm between then and the present day where the mother is the emotional focus. But this also could be a symptom of my loss of interest in the second half of the story where I speed read a lot of it!