The Notebook of Lost Things
A novel about the power of love.
Helene is forty-one; she enjoys sex with Harry, owner of Better Days, the local bar. But she will leave him if he cannot, just once, rise above the mundane and use his imagination so she can love him. Stella knows she loves Darryl, her high-school classmate, but her depressed, impoverished, weight-obsessed mother has to be her priority. And William Swick loves Uta, Helene's mother, loves her still although she died in a car accident two years earlier. On the anniversary of this death, each of them learns a lesson about the grace bestowed by love.
Praise for The Notebook of Lost Things
"The Notebook of Lost Things is told in prose that is Zen-like in its clarity, solidity, and attention to the ordinary. From this illuminated everydayness, the secret, sensuous, and always creditable lives of Staffel's characters naturally emerge, and the unfolding of their stories is fixed, so as not to be lost, by this mature and beautiful book." Stuart Dybek, The Coast of Chicago
"This fresh and lucid tale about the denizens of a small New York town is sure to be Staffel's breakout book. [Her] unusual characters are magnetic and her images surprising and resonant. And her prose is so silken and seamless, her novel flows like one long exhalation as she astutely traces life's cycle of coalescence and disintegration." Booklist (Starred)
"Ms. Staffel's intricately constructed novel is set in a decaying town in upstate New York. The place, with its failed businesses and abandoned farms, is solidly evoked. The principal characters, in contrast, are fluid rather than solid, transitory rather than rooted. They are all misfits..., people a bit out of kilter, and how they collide and support one another is the substance of the tale. It is a striking piece of work." The Atlantic
"Megan Staffel's The Notebook of Lost Things tells how the past and present, desire and futility, are intertwined. It is also the story of survival through imagination...Staffel's spare language and careful, even delicate rendering of Paris and the lives of its inhabitants contribute to the prevailing sense of loss and despair, making the rare moments of genuine hope poignant and powerful." San Diego Union-Tribune
"Staffel fills the novel with unforgettable luminous moments..." Bloomsbury Review
"The Notebook of Lost Things is ...resonant with clear-sighted humanity and artful, delicate prose. Staffel arrests the flicker of moments, those lost things that make up the experience of our days." Time Out New York