The Department of Lost and Found
I’m so glad to finally be writing this review because The Department of Lost & Found is the best book I’ve read in a long time. It’s Allison Winn Scotch’s debut novel and though it is a work of fiction, it reads like a memoir, the memoir of someone I wish I knew. No … someone I wish I had as a best girlfriend.
This book is beyond touching … it speaks to your soul. As a survivor, I connect to the fictional main character the way I connect to any member of the sisterhood.
The Department of Lost & Found is not pure chick lit and it’s not pure romance; this book has a little of both genres woven into it and I couldn’t put it down. It was an amazing dichotomy: I couldn’t wait to finish this book and when I finally did, I was sad that is was over because I enjoyed reading it so much. I wished it went on and on. Now, I crave a sequel. (Allison, can you get going on one, please?)
Here’s a synopsis: the book’s heroine, Natalie Miller, a 30-year-old single woman working as a senatorial aide, is loaded with ambition and gumption. Her world is rocked when she’s diagnosed with breast cancer. That’s where the story begins … read this excerpt from page 13:
“So you have to understand that in the span of less than a month, my (disloyal, scum-sucking) boyfriend of two years dumped me (”I can’t handle this” is how he put it, right before I threw a vase at his head, which, surprisingly enough, because he wasn’t much of an athlete, he actually manged to duck); my job, which previously had been my lifeblood, had been paired down to admittedly semidesperate emails; and my health, my mortality, something I’d never even given a flying fig of a thought to, was suddenly in total jeopardy. So it’s not hard to see why I was coming more than slightly undone.”
I mean, even though I have little in common with Nat, her story resonates with me, deeply. That’s the way that cancer thing is … time and time again, I notice, it gives us a shared experience.
A shared experience. I found myself thinking, that’s what bonds Natalie Miller and I together. Then I remember she isn’t human.
Back to the synopsis: After she’s diagnosed, Nat explores her previous “failed” relationships, the five great loves of her life. She considers starting a completely new relationship (with a good friend’s ex, man, that’s messy). She struggles to maintain her foothold at work while her responsibilities are being filled by someone not combating the effects of chemotherapy. She is forced to look at the professional choices she’s makes and why she makes them. She leans on her friends and angers her friends and leans on her friends some more. She’s so real.
This book is filled with many real moments — that’s why it reads like a true story.
Like the night before Nat’s mastectomy when she bids farewell to her breasts (here, I’ve spliced the paragraph, found on page 173, but the entire graf is among my favorites):
“I sat up in the soapy waters of my tub and held them both, my breasts. I wanted to mourn them, to kiss them good-bye and say that I’d miss them, but really I was too angry … These things, these symbols of my womanhood, these swollen mounds that were supposed to feed my children and display my ripeness to the world had done just the opposite … as I looked down on them that night, covered in frothy bubbles and hot water, I despised both them and what they’d done to me.”
Like the way Nat tracked the passing of time with her chemotherapy cycles (page 205):
“That’s what it’s like to live with cancer — it’s hard to remove it from your life, even when you’re talking about something else entirely.”
Like when Nat shopped for a party dress after enduring her treatment and took a good look at herself in the mirror, thinking about the words of another survivor, Susanna (page 263):
“I stood naked in front of the mirror … and stared at my body, so foreign, so different from when I started … and remembered Susanna’s wise words: that my body was just a vessel. What it carried inside of it was what really mattered.”
In The Department of Lost & Found, Allison Winn Scotch aptly balances the seriousness of breast cancer with humor — really funny stuff, stuff that makes me smile just thinking back. Like Nat’s obsession with The Price is Right. Or her adventures with marijuana (for medical purposes of course). I mean, there’s some great comical elements in this book, which lightens the burden of the main character’s disease. And that lightens the burden of ours, doesn’t it?
So there you have it — my take on this brilliant novel. My strong opinion is that this is a must read for any woman, but especially the breast cancer survivor. Well done Allison Winn Scotch. Well done.
Tomorrow I’m going to share a little bit about Allison Winn Scotch’s friend Elizabeth … diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer in October 2004 as a 31 year old first-time mom to a three month old. Clearly the inspiration behind the book, Lizzie deserves the limelight; she passed away in 2005 but I feel in my heart that she would be so proud of her friend’s accomplishment.
If you’re interested, you can read other reader reviews of The Department of Lost & Found at Amazon.
Now it’s your turn … what did you think?
September 7th, 2007 at 9:25 am
I finally have my copy of this book from the library and can’t wait to get into it over the weekend. Will come back and post my review and thoughts when I’ve done this.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:44 am
I thoroughly enjoyed “The Department of Lost and Found”, so much so that I read it in one day! It’s been quite some time since I’ve done that which is my testimony to a well written, compelling story. Allison Winn Scotch blends humor, empathy, understanding, and philosophy with a touch romance in 312 pages. The story of Natalie Miller could apply to anyone, not just a breast cancer survivor. While it deals with the main character’s journey through breast cancer, it is also a story of friendship, of life and of coming to terms with the changes and challenges that face us all at critical points in our growth as we go through life.
As a breast cancer survivor there were two personal notes that resonated with me. Natalie’s maternal grandmother had passed away from breast cancer before Natalie was born which is my story, and while doctors will say that a maternal grandmother is not a “link” to the disease, I believe that it is. To see this connection in black and white, while fictionalized, gave me a sense of value. I also loved that the boyfriend who walked out on Natalie at the time of her diagnosis was given the name “Ned”. I have no idea if Allison did that deliberately given that the initials NED stand for “No Evidence of Disease” in the cancer world, or if it was a subconscious decision. If the latter perhaps her friend Lizzie was guiding Allison’s pen as encouragement for the telling of the story.
There were so many comments made by Natalie that spoke directly to me, things that I had heard myself say during treatment, or things that I had felt. After an emotional “meltdown” with her friend Sally, early in her treatment, Natalie pulls herself together and yells at her cancer, “I’m not stopping until you prove me unstoppable.”, which is one of the best quotes about fighting cancer that I have heard, and I’ve heard many. It’s honest and it’s gutsy and it’s the way we feel as we are slogging our way through treatments that sometimes seem worse than the disease itself.
In the midst of treatment, Natalie is bored. She watches game shows (the obsession with “The Price is Right” was light, funny and I know I will never think of Bob Barker in quite the same way again!!!), soap operas, sends numerous e-mails and Natalie discovers that even when you have a support network, she is still “alone”. I felt that as I read it, I felt it as I went through it. I had a squadron of support for which I am forever grateful. Yet there were times that everyone else was getting on with life, going to work, doing the things that they did with their lives and I was “on hold”, on the sidelines, watching. Not a player, a spectator. Cancer treatment can be isolating and lonely at times.
I liked that the sections of the book were broken into treatment times, or called “rounds” as in a prize fight. Natalie herself says “I’ve marked my time since my diagnosis by my chemo rounds”. And we do that with treatment. We break it up into portion we can handle, and we mark time on our calendars by crossing out the rounds we’ve finished. A regular calendar becomes almost obsolete as we are so focused on completing the task at hand.
The title of the book is a brilliant philosophical observation. That through loss there is a finding. Natalie lost her breasts but she found so much more about herself and about life. This is what breast cancer gave me. I lost innocence and my attitude that life will only give you so many challenges. I felt I had already weathered more than my share and I was wrong. I was still waiting for breast cancer. It opened doors I didn’t even know I wanted to open, doors I didn’t even know where there. As Natalie says, “…the thing that cancer changes the most isn’t your breasts or your hair or anything at all on the outside. What it changes is everything else instead.” Amen Allison for capturing that so well.
When Natalie is dressing to attend the party thrown in her honor after discovering that chemotherapy and a double mastectomy have been successful, she chooses to wear a bold colored Pucci dress rather than a classic outfit that her mother says is “her”. Natalie opts for the bold dress because she realizes she is no longer “her”; that Natalie is no more. Again, this was something I completely identified with as I’m sure many cancer survivors have done. I said recently to someone that I want to decorate the world. Color is important, being bold, living life full, in my face, loud and noticeable. I don’t think it’s for everyone else. I know it is for “me”. I want to remind myself every day that I am here, that I am alive and vibrant. It’s the vibrancy that I think Allison was attempting to explain.
Dr. Chin, Natalie’s oncologist answered her question about what patients want to do when they have been declared clear to go (my words, not Natalie’s) and his response was the spirit I have felt since my treatment ended, “…I suppose that they go about finding the lives that they want to live, rather than the lives that they think they should be living.” Everyone should feel this way about life, not just cancer patients/survivors.
This book was written in tribute and in honor of Allison’s beloved friend Lizzie and yes, she wanted to control the ending and give it a “happily ever after”. Allison couldn’t do that for Lizzie in life but she certainly did through her love and her words.
September 9th, 2007 at 10:59 am
I just wanted to mention Karen that I also reviewed the book on my blog, and then had the pleasure of sharing my thoughts directly with Allison. What a pleasant surprise when she contacted me with her thanks. What an honour and a pleasure that was!!
September 9th, 2007 at 11:00 am
As for our next read, I haven’t yet read “Cancer Made me a Shallower Person” or “Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy” and I’m sure there are others.
Have you read either of those books?
September 9th, 2007 at 11:05 am
I’ve just scrolled back and see you’ve read “Lipstick”. But as I haven’t read any of the others you’ve listed, I’m going to see what I can find in my travels and I’ll let you know my thoughts on what could be next!!
September 10th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Sherry, so glad you are in this conversation!
First of all … I’d love to read “Cancer Made Me A Shallower Person” and I’m ready to start “Nordie’s at Noon”; I might post another poll to see who wants to read what this month.
Second, I’m headed over to your blog after I leave here tonight to read your review of Allison’s book. I LOVE what you wrote here. I agree … I’m not stopping until you prove me unstoppable … good recall on that one, I didn’t pick up on the way that one resonates. And yeah, cancer does change us … I feel inspired to write a Q&A post!
Thanks again!