My new favorite book is the intriguingly titled The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly. It was one of those titles that called to me from a library shelf, and the story has stuck with me so much that I went out and bought it this past week to read again. Connolly is normally a mystery/thriller writer, so you may have to look for it in that section, but The Book of Lost Things is a wonderfully dark fairy tale, about a boy named David who literally slips through a crack into a decidedly dangerous fantasy world.

There are some parallels between this book and the movie Pan's Labyrinth, which I also love, but they're mostly on the surface: they're both dark fairy tales that are not for kids (for whom fairy tales were supposedly never originally intended anyway), and they both deal with a single-parent child caught in the middle of wartime and escaping into a fantasy world. Connolly's David is a lonely child in WWII-era London, whose fanciful, book-loving mother dies, leaving him with his unimaginative father and a strange new ability to hear voices from the books on his shelves. When his father remarries and brings a new baby into the family, David turns bitter and resentful, and refuses to accept them as family. They move into a new house in the country to avoid the dangers of air raids in the city, and David is left to his own devices in a bedroom once occupied by a boy who disappeared mysteriously a long time ago - another boy unusually fascinated with books.

In this new house, where his resentment of the new baby grows, David begins to have visions of a strange, evil-looking character, The Crooked Man. When David follows him through a large crack in the foundation of the garden wall, he enters a forest world where humans are hunted down by wolves and wolf-man hybrids, and The Crooked Man is a well-known trickster, who wants David to promise him his baby brother. David befriends first a hunter and then a knight, who try to help him reach the mysterious king of this land, and keep him from the clutches of The Crooked Man. Some familiar fairy tales are incorporated into the story and twisted, only once in a way that doesn't work; there is a chapter about seven dwarfs and an obese Snow White where the humor is suddenly too broad to work with the rest of the story. There are quite a few scary episodes, however: David is captured at one point by a woman who splices animals and humans together and then releases them into the woods so she can hunt them down, and David's escape is pretty harrowing and bloody.

Some themes are definitely adult without being scary; for instance David's knight friend has been ostracized from his father's kingdom for something taboo that turns out to be love for another man, and The Crooked Man tries to trick David into believing his friend is a child molester with designs on David. What David discovers when he reaches the King is pretty disturbing and will keep you on your seat for sure till the end. Connolly does a great job of tying in elements of the real world with the fantasy, again a little like Pan's Labyrinth or another favorite of mine, Mirrormask.

My only criticisms other than the Snow White parody are: After the resolution, Connolly gives us an unnecessary view into David's life as an adult, when the real story has already ended and nothing new is gained. (Especially since it's a gloomy forecast.) And the beginning of the story drags a little while David is mourning his mother and his father is dating the future stepmother. A little trimming at the beginning and the end would definitely not have harmed the book, but even without it, it's pure, absorbing escapism. Especially if you're a fan of fairy tales.

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