Description

Step through the door to lost pages and escape a life you never wanted . . . On her tenth birthday, Aydee runs away from home and from her neglectful parents. At first, surviving alone on the streets is harsh, but a series of frightening, bewildering encounters with strange primordial creatures leads her to a bookshop called Lost Pages, where she steps into a fantastic, sometimes dangerous, but exciting life. Aydee grows up at the reality-hopping Lost Pages, which seems to attract a clientele that is both eccentric and desperate. She is repeatedly drawn into an eternal war between enigmatic gods and monsters, until the day she is confronted by her worst herself. “Insanely imaginative. . . Lalumière’s talents are on full display in this cerebral, erotic, and hypnotically compelling tale of bibliophilic wonder.” –Publishers Weekly “A weird, entrancing book, informed by a unique vision. . . The doors of perception are occasionally blown outward in orgasmic epiphanies. . . it makes for a good trip.” –Alex Good, Quill and Quire “Lalumière is clearly comfortable with the trickier elements of horror and erotica, and knows when to step back at the right moment. Although the Lost Pages world is pure fantasy, it is no fantasy world. He may have found the most compassionate way to depict people on the edge of society, and that is to paint them as being lost to themselves—and to everyone else.” –Louise Fabiani, The Montreal Review of Books “In some ways the story reminds the reader of Carlos Ruiz Zaf√≥n’s The Angel’s Game meets Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with just a touch of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline thrown in for good measure. . . . Lalumière’s voice is clearly his own and The Door to Lost Pages is quite unlike anything else you’ve read.” –January Magazine “A fable for our times. . . Philip K. Dick channelling Jean-Paul Sartre and Yukio Mishima. . . layer upon layer of daydream and nightmare.” –François Lauzon, The Montreal Gazette “Pick up this book and open your own door to Lost Pages—you might find something inside that you didn’t know existed.” –The Winnipeg Review “Elegant dark fantasy saturated with phantasmagoric imagery, skillfully wrapped around meta-narrative structures . . . Due to Lalumière’s subtle characterization, Aydee can take a deserved place alongside other intrepid dark fantasy heroines such as Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and Candy Quackenbush from Clive Barker’s Abarat series.” –The Portal “The author’s unquestionably excitable imagination is breath-taking, if not utterly refreshing. Leave your worries at the door and walk on into the fantastical world where magic and mystery lie hand-in-hand with the beating heart of humanity and the limitless questions within the universe . . . This is a novella to become quickly and unconsciously lost within. Its open expanse of lovingly created passages into dreamlike stages of life, immerse the reader in the unobstructed enjoyment of storytelling. And that’s what it always seems to come back to here. The utter and unashamed enjoyment of storytelling. And that pretty much sums up the book ‚Äì the sheer enjoyment of storytelling…” –Christopher A. Hall, DLS Reviews “Erotic, wise, comic, tragic . . . it’s involving fiction of the most intimate and passionate stripe!” –From the introduction by Paul Di Filippo

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