List of the Lost Review

I’m still coming down from the high of my trip to England to see Morrissey and my friends last week and to be honest it’s quite the plummet. That was one of the happiest weeks of my life… and returning home to reality (whatever that is) is a bit of a slap in the face. However, I was very excited to have the chance to read Morrissey’s novel, List of The Lost, which was released just two days after my return to Canada. I don’t even have my own copy yet, as it isn’t due to arrive until October, but Boozey was nice enough to let me read her online copy.  Safe to say, this is the first time I’ve read a book twice before a copy is even nestled away on my overstuffed bookshelves.

I decided to stop reading the book reviews after I found them to be, predictably, full of personal digs towards Morrissey, with little focus on the work itself.  Because, of course, no reviewer appeared to be able to read the book and take it for what it is…and they seemed far more focused on who wrote it and whatever their personal views were towards the author. The personal jabs by the reviewers, who could barely piece together a 350-word review, just indicated that sadly, the world is indeed full of crashing bores. I will form my own opinions, thank you.

I read List of the Lost the first time so quickly I probably missed a fair bit.  But what struck me immediately was the prose style. I can’t quite compare it to anyone else’s, and that’s a good thing.  Stylistically, Morrissey’s prose is extremely poetic, and internal rhyme, rhythm, and alliteration are weaved intricately throughout his sentences.  As the real and proper poet laureate that he is, I can imagine that read aloud this rhythm and poetry would become even more pronounced and (nudge…ahem…begging) if a certain someone who has a lovely singing voice were to read it aloud for the audiobook format I think it would be quite breathtaking.

The novel is filled with metaphor and simile in its descriptions, which, to some reviewers, was perhaps a little overwhelming. While they found “fun” in nitpicking the metaphors, particularly the ones in the lovemaking scenes, I enjoyed this aspect of the writing.  Ok, the now-famous “bulbous salutation” line did elicit a bit of a chuckle, but then, you know, Mozzer can be quite funny sometimes, and we would be missing out if we didn’t see some humour woven through the text, an example being his inclusion of a valet with the name Chesty Normous.  Another amusing moment of wit-fueled word-play occurs with the line: "I could be at home pulverizing my wife at Scrabble, or scrabbling my pulverized wife."  I can imagine that the usage of metaphors and Morrissey’s vast vocabulary and word play may pose difficulties and subtleties that are harder for the non-native English speaker, but Moz is quite gifted linguistically, which of course we already knew.

The novel has also been critiqued for not being focused. My answer to that is a series of questions: is life itself focused? Is your own mind focused? How do you think?  Do you think entirely in order all of the time? Are your feelings in order, with a beginning, middle, climax, dénouement?  Well, probably not. Furthermore, writing is art – and why should art follow a standard, organized predictable path? I am blah-blah-blahing on here, but you see my point.  List of the Lost is a stream-of-consciousness journey that takes us through a maze of brilliant commentary on the human condition. And this commentary, whether you agree or not, is a bit like getting slammed in the face with brutal honesty about the state of the media, the police, the government, the meat industry, the ‘royals,’ aging, faith, our notions of sexuality. No wonder it made some people uncomfortable, because hearing the truth is uncomfortable; it makes you squirm a bit.  And that’s a good thing. Some reviewers may regard this as tangential to the storyline – BUT – the societal backdrop of life shapes our character for better or for worse, and with compliance or defiance we develop along with our response to that societal backdrop.

I’m not here to give away the plot, and I won’t, because not all of us have been fortunate enough to read it due to international availability (or lack thereof), but after two readings I can honestly say I enjoyed it because it was DIFFERENT to anything else I’ve ever read.  Thank goodness for that.  With all of the bland books we must wade through that are “popular,” like 50 Shades of Grey, predictable political “thrillers” where the president-must-be-saved-within-48-hours, or mind numbing “chick-lit,” it’s refreshing to see an author present something in a unique format and actually have something to say. Did you really expect Moz to do something expected? Like it or leave it, we can likely all agree that it is a unique work.

Some moments that stood out to me included his approach to writing about grief, suicide, and aging.  I found the passage about suicide particularly profound; "he shall travel this path without the strength to cope with anything else, no longer likely to explode from this intensity, yet ready to fuse the physical with the spiritual and to accept that the next moment will be unlike any other...Let the minutes spin as a tankard of vodka is clouded by a heavy overjolt of white and brown powder, both of which submerge like falling snow as they enjoy one another and whisper, I'm the right friend for you." These topics hurt, they torment, and admittedly plague our thoughts at some time or another, and he captures their ugliness with full force, and we see a line where ugly and beauty perhaps blur in his poetic description of the agony of these dark topics that ravage us as humans who are constantly left asking, why, why, why?   Perhaps what makes this ugliness beautiful is that in reading it we feel the anguish of our human condition is understood. I’m not sure.

Moz also holds up a mirror to the media, which includes Eliza’s astute torrent of rage towards TV news: “Have you ever watched the TV news, and listened to all of their scare-tactic propaganda … every story designed to frighten you, scare you off, make you feel small, make you feel alarmed yet hopeless … and then – bam! – ‘and now we have some sports news’, as if this ought to counterbalance all the shit that’s happening in the world.”  And isn’t this exactly how it’s presented to us? I remember the last day I ever watched the TV news, I saw countless minutes of footage of animals being tortured, humans being bombed out or suffering from AIDS in a homeless shelter, followed by a smiling blonde woman sharing her “famous lavender muffin recipe.” No more.

I think what we can surmise from all of this is that the critics don’t get Morrissey, and that’s totally fine.  I haven’t come across many fans who didn’t enjoy the novel, and those that didn’t love it seem more perplexed by it.  Innovation is inherently difficult to grasp, and List of The Lost shows us that yet again, Moz is always at least three steps ahead of the rest of the world, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.