Synopses & Reviews
Caryl Phillipss
The Lost Child is a sweeping story of orphans and outcasts, haunted by the past and fighting to liberate themselves from it. At its center is Monica Johnson—cut off from her parents after falling in love with a foreigner—and her bitter struggle to raise her sons in the shadow of the wild moors of the north of England. Phillips intertwines her modern narrative with the childhood of one of literatures most enigmatic lost boys, as he deftly conjures young Heathcliff, the anti-hero of
Wuthering Heights,
and his ragged existence before Mr. Earnshaw brought him home to his family.
Written in the tradition of Jean Rhyss Wide Sargasso Sea and J. M. Coetzees Foe, The Lost Child is a multifaceted, deeply original response to Emily Brontes masterpiece, Wuthering Heights. A critically acclaimed and sublimely talented storyteller, Caryl Phillips is "in a league with Toni Morrison and V. S. Naipaul" (Booklist) and "his novels have a way of growing on you, staying with you long after youve closed the book." (The New York Times Book Review) A true literary feat, The Lost Child recovers the mysteries of the past to illuminate the predicaments of the present, getting at the heart of alienation, exile, and family by transforming a classic into a profound story that is singularly its own.
Review
Praise for
A Distant Shore“Provocative . . . [Phillipss] novels have a way of staying with you long after you've closed the book.” —The New York Times Book Review
Review
"With uncanny intimacy, eloquence, and compassion, Caryl Phillips stitches together past and present, the world of classic English literature and of hardsrcrabble, contemporary English life more movingly than ever before, speaking through every one of his characters with humbling depth and understanding. The simple, startling result is that, after
The Lost Child, English literature looks richer, more mysterious and more human." —Pico Iyer
"Caryl Phillips has found a fascinating way of writing about the elusive parts of human experience that have to do with loss, absence, yearning, and the struggle of marginalized individuals to build a viable existence. Refracting the present through the past, life through literature, the sweetness and sadness of 1970's England through the austere grandeur of the Brontes world, he creates a highly original narrative that is both startling and strangely moving." —James Lasdun
Praise for A Distant Shore
“Provocative . . . [Phillipss] novels have a way of staying with you long after you've closed the book.” —The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
The award-winning novelist Caryl Phillips revisits Emily Brontës masterpiece Wuthering Heights as a lyrical tale of orphans and outcasts, absence and hope. A sweeping novel spanning generations, The Lost Child tells the story of young Heathcliffs life before Mr. Earnshaw brought him home to his family; the Brontë sisters and their wayward brother, Branwell; Monica, whose father forces her to choose between her family and the foreigner she loves; and a boys disappearance into the wildness of the moors and the brother he leaves behind.
Phillips deftly spins these disparate lives—bound by the past and struggling to liberate themselves from it—into a stunning literary work. Phillips has been called “in a league with Toni Morrison and V. S. Naipaul” (Donna Seaman, Booklist), and his work is charged with the complexities of migration, alienation, and displacement. Haunting and heartbreaking, The Lost Child transforms a classic into a profound story that is singularly its own.
About the Author
Caryl Phillips is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including Dancing in the Dark, Crossing the River, and Color Me English. His novel A Distant Shore won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and his other awards include a Lannan Foundation Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and Britain's oldest literary award the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in New York.