so i didnt know what i was getting when i first read this book as it was one i think i picked for the cover, i cant actually remember. this book hooked me from page one and didnt let go at all.
the book is full of stories and memories in which you feel everything the author wants you to feel, its raw in places but then you can feel the healing the story line brings you.

wouldnt recommend this to anyone who is having a hard time with lost as there are some chapters which could trigger some emotions but over all a great book

Beautifully written, a philosophical reflection with genuine feeling and insight from the authors experience with loss and then the finding of love. Avoids maudlin reflection, instead considering psychological research and literary examples to add to the consideration of emotional responses. A pleasure to read.

I didn't enjoy this one, but fans of long form reflective journalism/memoir are likely to love it. It is well written, I just found the ling reflection on specific wording hard to pay attention to.

I am in awe of Kathryn Schulz’s talent. From the first pages of Lost and Found I was involved and with her on her journey. Her words really touched me and I laughed and I cried at her observations and experiences. I haven’t ever read anything quite like it before, and I have no idea how she came up with the idea of writing this book - but I am so glad she did. Autobiographical but also a beautiful and loving reflection on life, death and love. I am going to spend a lot of time thinking about what she shared, and I am so glad I read it. Beautiful!

Beginning on Lost, Schulz evokes everything from death and heartbreak, to sentimental items and relationships, to war and famine, and, even, self-consciousness. All the time, though, she circles the death of her father. Tales of her family, growing up, she tells us who he was, and how she was shaped by him. She continues on more loss - that of objects, but also airplanes. And always, she returns to her father.

His loss has left a large hole in her world and it feels more than a little like she's still trying to fill it up with other lost things.

Schulz leaps from point to point, across a stretched length of very thin wire, connecting things often only tangentially, but always entertainingly.

Lost sets up further essays: Found, and And. I find in these the same issue, a pinballing sensation of the author darting around, trying to connect things and place meaning on them. It just doesn't quite connect for me.

It's entertaining to read, provided you've had a good cup of caffeine to keep up, but the constant twirling from topic to topic and back around again is reminiscent of a ringmaster. Of drawing the crowd's attention so they don't see what's happening just over to the side, don't notice the cracked paint covered with glitter, concealing the fact that it's just not that deep.

I was sorry to not connect with this one, it just wasn't for me, but I have a lot of respect for Schulz for bearing her heart like this. That's not easy, and I want to note that.

"Our crossing is a brief one, best spent bearing witness to all that we see: honoring what we find noble, tending what we know needs our care, recognizing that we are inseparably connected to all of it, including what is not yet upon us, including what is already gone. We are here to keep watch, not to keep.”⁣

Meditative, profound and tragic, this memoir is a fascinating one. Kathryn Schulz met her beloved wife and lost the father within a very short space of time, and the book deals with her coping with this strange twinning of profound loss and profound joy.

It's a challenging, thought-provoking work that mixes personal experience and more literary pursuits. I found it a little difficult at times, my concentrating waning, but it's really worth the commitment. I also read it partly on audio and it['s beautifully read by the author - this is usually my favourite way to experience memoir so I would recommend this, too!

Moving, compelling, one that will lodge deep in your soul.

Most memoir books I have read, usually explore the author's childhood, and how it was a trauma for them. Kathryn's childhood was the complete opposite, as she describes such a close and loving relationship with her father, The book is split into 3 parts, the first, 'Lost' - explores the loss of her father. It is so thoughtfully and beautifully written and explores the journey of grief so well.
The second part, 'Found', explores love and learning to live again after such a loss. It made me cry, laugh, and remember those exciting feelings you experience in the throes of a new relationship.
The final part, 'And', was uplifting and rounded the book off nicely. The first part was the best and definitely drew me in.
The prose, so intelligently written and full of emotion. I loved this memoir and would definitely recommend it.

Eighteen months before Kathryn Schulz’s beloved father died, she met the woman she would marry. In Lost & Found, she weaves the stories of those relationships into a brilliant exploration of how all our lives are shaped by loss and discovery - from the maddening disappearance of everyday objects to the sweeping devastations of war, pandemic, and natural disaster; from finding new planets to falling in love.

Three very different American families form the heart of Lost & Found: the one that made Schulz’s father, a charming, brilliant, absentminded Jewish refugee; the one that made her partner, an equally brilliant farmer’s daughter and devout Christian; and the one she herself makes through marriage. But Schulz is also attentive to other, more universal kinds of conjunction: how private happiness can coexist with global catastrophe, how we get irritated with those we adore, how love and loss are themselves unavoidably inseparable. The resulting book is part memoir, part guidebook to living in a world that is simultaneously full of wonder and joy and wretchedness and suffering - a world that always demands both our gratitude and our grief.

I decided to read this book because I have personal experience of falling in love after a huge loss, although my story did not have a happy ending, leaving me finding out I had much more work to do before I was ready to commit to another person. Schulz’s book reads like poetry and has an incredible way of taking such wildly conflicting feelings and making sense of them. It’s about taking one of the hardest experiences we can go through and turning it, not quite into a positive, but into a life lesson we can learn from. We can use our most painful experiences to not only inform and improve our happier times, but to remind us to feel gratitude for them.

Every day we experience loss. It might be something as simple as losing our reading glasses - something I do ten times a day, invariably finding I’ve been wearing them on top of my head the whole time. These minor losses are more frustrating and annoying than sad. However, there are other losses that do initiate a process of grieving. I get upset if I lose a favourite plant in the garden. We might lose a celebrity we’re a particular fan of - I still haven’t recovered from Rick Mayall. The loss of a family pet, something I’m experiencing this week, can be totally debilitating. Confusion comes when, in the midst of that loss, we might find something funny again or really enjoy a day out. Happiness amidst pain is an acutely difficult emotion because it can trigger a sudden wave of grief, it might make us feel guilty as if we shouldn’t find anything pleasurable again. We might have these false, but nevertheless important, landmarks in our heads where it becomes okay to do certain things again - an emotional equivalent of going from black clothing to ‘half mourning’ where it’s permissible to wear grey or mauve. In this case Kathryn finds her future wife while grieving her father. Probably the most complicated situation of all. We’ve all fallen in love and as I read the book I was thinking of all the times love has made me into a total fool, singing along to the radio, dancing round the kitchen, plastering photos of them all over social media. How do all of those things look, and more importantly feel when you’re also losing the most important person in your life at the same time.

Kathryn splits the book into sections dealing with how we approach loss and even more importantly how we fund the ‘&’ that brings it all together. It’s harder to find that person you want to commit to for the rest of your life, if you have no experience of losing someone so important to you. The lessons we learn from grief, inform our ability to love, commit and remain together. This is not just beautiful to read, it’s a book you can learn from. It’s worth reading it with pen and paper next to you, because I found myself underlining passages then writing down memories and events it had triggered from my life. Not only did it inform my own life, it will make me a better therapist, because I feel more informed on how to support someone through loss and see light at the end; it’s practical as well as beautifully written. I loved how she managed to interweave so many different threads - from memories of walking the Pacific coast, to how objects trigger memory as she’s clearing the family home with her mother and observations about the Galaxy beyond. There’s a closing down of things as she readies her parents for a home more suitable for their later lives and that boxing of precious memories. What do we need in order to connect us to the world and others? It’s a constant zooming narrative inward to the very personal and outwards to the physical space we live in, society and then our universe. Despite this it’s not trying to be clever, this is just a naturally intelligent and curious woman trying to make sense of the biggest existential questions we face. Sadness and loss inform joy and vice versa, as we use the wonderful memories of how love felt and the times we had with our loved one in order to cope. This is something I’ve found, as the years pass since my husband died I now bring up funny stories and laugh at his memory more often than I cry. So, despite being about loss, this memoir is certainly not a misery one. It’s happy and humorous in parts. People who know who and how to love have the ability to fill their lives with joy. They become fulfilled.

Will appear on my blog in April

The front cover of this book is absolutely gorgeous, the storyline is the exact same level of gorgeousness too. The characters the plot and the writing is all really lovely, engaging and beautiful.

Eighteen months before Kathryn Schulz’s beloved father died, she met the woman she would marry. In Lost & Found, she weaves the stories of those relationships into a brilliant exploration of how all our lives are shaped by loss and discovery - from the maddening disappearance of everyday objects to the sweeping devastations of war, pandemic, and natural disaster; from finding new planets to falling in love.

This book is so good, incredibly well written and so insightful. I was totally captivated right from the start and completely compelled to read this really quickly. A beautiful book.

This memoir recounts the author's experiences losing her beloved father and meeting the woman who eventually became her wife within the same period of 18 months. In the first section she discusses the man he was, who experienced a traumatic early life but went on to live a predominantly happy life who loved language and often lost things leading up to his death..She describes how he became ill and ultimately how the family decided to let him go,

In the second section she rewinds 18 months to when she and Casey met and fell rapidly and deeply in love . The final section focuses on the 3rd word in the title "and" and pays attention to its significance in our language.. "And" is a unifier which brings together the first two sections in a continuation of the story and Kathryn and Casey's wedding. I found this final section filled with joy and the most uplifting.. The message is clear that life goes on after grief and after finding love. All three words in the title are fully explored in the book.

This ARC (kindly supplied by the publishers and NetGalley) could not have arrived at a more perfect time for me having lost my father several months ago and experiencing the death of my mother in the last few weeks while I was finally reunited with my long distance relationship partner who I had not seen since January 2020 before the pandemic begun .It is a reflective and deeply touching memoir perfect for anyone who loves language and pondering the meanings of words.

A richly-textured, moving, thought-provoking piece. A beautiful memoir that captures your attention and your heart from beginning to end.

Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz is the most beautifully written memoir of love and grief I think I have ever read. Schultz writes so honestly and movingly about the death of her father, and how this experience impacted her life. She uses the analogy of lost items to try and come to terms with losing a loved one, and she writes so poignantly about the processes we all go through when we suffer such a loss. In the second half of the book, Schulz writes of how she met her wife, and how finding love is equally as mysterious a process as losing a loved one. The devotion she has for C, her wife, is palpable on the page, and Schulz's book will restore anyone's faith in humanity, proving the endurable power of love.

In less than two years, Kathryn Schulz met her beloved wife and lost the father who shaped so much of who she is. Dealing with the coming together of loss and discovery, Kathryn explores the connections between them and the wonders of the two most important relationships in her life. This thought-provoking memoir explores the multiple meanings of ‘lost’ and ‘found’, incorporating science, philosophy, history and plenty of personal stories and reflection. It is both emotional and uplifting with a bittersweet, hopeful end note.

Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz is an insightful, well-researched and thought-provoking book about love and loss, sorrow and joy.

On an eloquently written and thought-provoking meditation on loss and love. Let me start with this. This is a book that I couldn't read in one go as I've had quite a bit of time reflecting on it and how much I've taken away from the beautiful words Kathryn Schultz has written. It's a beautiful book that's both intimate and philosophical, and while I find her humane writing relatable and would appeal universally, I did feel intellectually challenged by the way she writes and the literary references within the book. Sign of a really good book, if you ask me.⁣
⁣
The first part of the book is about the loss of her father Isaac and her own grieving process, the second part is on the woman who would eventually become her wife, while the third part is all about how these experiences are so interconnected and part of our human life. While each part is really honest and heartfelt, my favourite part is the first one on grief as I was highlighting so voraciously. I finished reading the book earlier today and I'm still thinking about it. How can I not when I see passages like the one below?⁣
⁣
“No matter what goes missing, the object you need or the person you love, the lessons are always the same. Disappearance reminds us to notice, transience to cherish, fragility to defend. Loss is a kind of external conscience, urging us to make better use of our finite days. Our crossing is a brief one, best spent bearing witness to all that we see: honoring what we find noble, tending what we know needs our care, recognizing that we are inseparably connected to all of it, including what is not yet upon us, including what is already gone. We are here to keep watch, not to keep.”⁣
⁣
I actually received an advanced copy, which I'm very grateful for, and I know it's a book I'll keep on coming back to, from time to time in the future.

Brilliant read!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read a digital arc in exchange for my feedback.

Part memoir, part essay, part extended meditation, this is an impressive exploration of myriad forms of loss and discovery. New Yorker writer Kathryn Schulz goes back to a momentous time in her life, when she met and fell for the woman she would later marry, a turbulent period inextricably linked to the death of her father Isaac. In lyrical, probing, sometimes passionate prose, Schulz has constructed a nuanced portrait of grief that’s also a celebration of happenstance, of unexpected, profound connection. It’s a nuanced, intellectually complex, admirably disciplined piece that roams through territories and concepts. Schulz draws on literature from quest narrative to poetry, philosophy, anecdote and personal experience, inviting comparisons to work by Leslie Jamison, Susan Sontag or Maggie Nelson. Schulz’s father’s a particularly memorable figure, deftly drawn. An erudite, Jewish lawyer who could quote a stream of lines from plays and books, hold forth on everything from Italian anarchists to baseball but rarely find his keys. Someone who grew up in the shadow of trauma and immense loss - most of his relatives were deported from Lodz in Poland to Auschwitz during the war. He’s juxtaposed with C, Schulz’s later wife, originally working-class, a country girl whose love of reading took her to Harvard, and whose devout Christianity makes her seem an unlikely choice for an atheist, steeped in Jewish heritage and lore, like Schulz, but is somehow, and absolutely, the right fit. A richly-textured, moving, thought-provoking piece.

Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Picador, Pan Macmillan for an arc