“The Book of Lost and Found” - Lucy Foley

🩰 This novel is quite unlike the other two Foley novels I’ve read. It is a mystery wrapped in a historical fiction, and hinges on long-held secrets. I had anticipated another psychological thriller, and this is definitely not that. But I enjoyed it very much regardless of genre misapprehensions.

🩰TBLF toggles between two primary timelines: 1928 and 1986. It reminds me of “The Stationery Shop” with its theme of love lost, and “The American Library in Paris” with its wartime backdrop. Foley takes us between Corsica, London, Paris, and New York during the decades between the 1920s and 1980s.

🩰 Foley’s main character in the 1928 timeline is Tom Stafford who finds himself thrown among the Bright Young Things set, with the dazzling Alice Everley occupying most of his thoughts. These parts are told in third person. Kate is the focus of the 1986 timeline. Her ballerina mother, June Darling died some time ago, and she is now coping with the death of her Mom’s adoptive mother/ballet teacher/wealthy patron, Evie.

🩰 Alice, though a member of high society, found it repressive and had a wild passion for independence. Kate, on the other hand, with all the blessings of the more progressive ‘80s, had a co-dependent friendship with June. After June and Evie’s deaths, Kate finds herself adrift; she’s unable to commit to any course of action. Alice is her antithesis. She commits and runs headlong wherever her decisions take her; it is telling that she does not run to hide behind her aunt’s wealth. I found this contrast between the two, fascinating.