Lost & Found by Brooke Davis ***

Life is what happens while we're doing something else. Lost & Found by Brooke Davis is a book written in this style. The plot develops and the characters evolve in the background while the action seems to be an, often surrealistic, but beautifully written, distraction.

The main character, prepubescent Millie Bird is on her own, joining the many juvenile orphans in literature.  Her father is dead, and her mother has deserted her. She is obsessed with death and her search for her mother.

Everyone knows everything abut being born, and no one know anything about being dead.

The other two POV characters are Agatha Pantha and Karl the Touch Typist, and pair of octogenarians, lost in memories of past adventures and deceased spouses.

When did I stop doing things and start remembering them instead?

These three lost souls wander through the Nullarbor Plain, a part of Australia, south of the middle-of-nowhere and half-way between Perth and Melbourne. As befitting of a dissertation in creative writing, the language and descriptions are exquisite, but in the end, I found the wonderful writing  not quite enough for compensate for the lack of narrative flow and story arc.

... as long as you're alive, people you know, people you love, will die ... How do you tell you child that this is how life works?

Life yes, but novels, not so much.

I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads First Reads giveaway on October 10, 2014. I received my copy on October 14, 2014.