Book Review: The Loss of All Lost Things

The Loss of All Lost Things. Amina Gautier. Elixir Press, February 1, 2016, Trade Paperback and Kindle, 216 pages.

Reviewed by Dipika Mukherjee. 

The first story in the collection, "Lost and Found," begins with the unsettling lines: “I wish I had a little boy just like you. I wish you were my own.” And the boy believes it, every single word. The third short story, "The Loss of All Lost Things," picks up the first story from the mother’s point of view, and the reader is drawn into the world of a parent’s worst nightmare, of an irredeemable loss with no closure. It seems almost too bleak to bear, but the writing is so crisp and spare and gorgeous that the pages turn themselves.

The Loss of All Lost Things is a dark, compelling book. Besides the two related stories that open this collection, the other stories are not interlinked. In these fifteen stories, Gautier trawls the depths of human frailty and cowardice, with some hope of redemption but more often a sense of futility. 

These stories have all been previously published in literary magazines like the Prairie Schooner and Agni, and the writing is well crafted and crisply edited, with nothing descending into bathos.

However, as in all short story collections, not all stories work equally well. "Lost and Found" and "The Loss of All Lost Things" are a strong start to the book, and "Cicero Waiting," which also deals with the loss of a child, is both intelligent and gorgeously crafted. "Navigator of Culture" takes the reader on a journey to a world where Barbie dolls were all white although the narrator’s happiest memories were from a room crowded with black women getting their hair done, a place of so many contradictions that she reacts with uncharacteristic brutality. There can be no absolution for one so unaware of her absolute privilege: “If I were Annette, I’d hate me too. Never once did I think to replace the doll I had decapitated. It never crossed my mind that Annette had nothing else to play with since I’d destroyed her one and only doll. It never even occurred to me to say sorry.”

In this collection, there are stories about the loss of spouses through death or divorce, the detachment from children too busy for parents, men losing women, and women losing men. The stories are haunting and varied, and generally work really well.

Except when Gautier overstretches. "Instersections" feels clichéd, told in the voice of a man who falls in love with a black woman’s braids. “Writ on her scalp was the map of his life and all the winding paths it had taken.” Another story, "A Teacup of My Time," has some very interesting conflicts, but the character of Majumdar is described as Punjabi throughout; this factual error acted like a smudge on the inside pane of a beautiful painting.

This is a collection worth reading for gorgeous characters and skilled writing. Highly recommended.