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Lost and Wanted

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What to expect

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Lost and Wanted by Nell Freudenberger, read by
Anne Marie Lee.

Helen Clapp is a physics professor. She doesn't believe in pseudo-science, or time travel and especially not in ghosts. So when she gets a missed call from Charlie, her closest friend from university with whom she hasn't spoken in over a year, Helen thinks there must be some mistake. Because Charlie died two days ago.

Then when her young son, Jack, claims to have seen Charlie in their house just the other day, Helen begins to have doubts.

Through the grief of the husband and daughter she left behind, Helen is drawn into the orbit of Charlie's world, slotting in the missing pieces of her friend's past. And, as she delves into the web of their shared history, Helen finds herself entangled in the forgotten threads of her own life.

Lost and Wanted is a searing novel from one of America's most exciting writers about the sacred knottiness of female friendship, the forces which fuse us together and those which drive us apart.

Critics Review

Endlessly rich . . . It is Freudenberger's willingness to accept human contradictions here - and to lay them out with a combination of calm rigour and rueful comedy - that so triumphantly makes Lost and Wanted the real thing
The Times
Dazzling . . .[Freudenberger explores] the nature of ambition, success and grief . . . brilliant
Financial Times
Freudenberger has a real eye for the subtle differences in how people react to adversity, an ear for the way children talk, and an artist's clear-sighted commitment to seeing the totality of her characters
Sunday Times
The effect is beautiful . . . Reading it, I was moved by intimacies near and far, real and imagined, lost and found in all the echoing corners of the expanding universe
New York Times
This spooky mystery fuses nimbly explained science with a finely calibrated meditation on grief and paths not taken
Mail on Sunday
Tender, sharply observed and marvellously rich
Daily Mail
Are we connected? Are we alone? Freudenberger's brilliant and compassionate novel takes on the big questions of the universe and proves, again, that she is one of America's greatest writers
Andrew Sean Green, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'Less'
[A] stunning portrayal of grief . . . The integration of ideas from physics sparks in the reader new ways of thinking about the nature of time and existence as well as, on a less cosmic scale, about human relationships . . .This is a beautiful and moving novel
Publishers' Weekly
Dazzling . . . [Freudenberger] dramatizes, through Helen, both the dawning awareness that life doesn't always allow for second chances and the great midlife consolation prize: a greater appreciation for those chances - and people - one has been given.
Washington Post
With page-turning acceleration, Lost and Wanted is a piercing meditation on the immutable truths that mourning calls into question. Freudenberger [has a] gravity-defying gift
O, the Oprah Magazine
Author Nell Freudenberger
Narrator Anne Marie Lee
Duration 13 hours and 31 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9780241987483
Format Audiobook
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Genre Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Narrative theme: Sense of place
Availability AU, GB, IE

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