The Door to Lost Pages: reviews

“Erotic, wise, comic, tragic, passionate, surprising fabulations” — Paul Di Filippo

 

  • “At once delicate and macabre … takes the reader down lost highways of the mind to where a detour, a way station, or magical bookshop awaits to regale the traveller with urban fairy stories populated by outcast children and childlike outcasts, the lonely, the desperately lost.” —Richard Calder, author of Dead Girls
  • “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.” —The Montreal Review of Books
  • “Claude Lalumière reveals the mythology of his world in pieces, often through nested stories. Encounters with the forces of evil are twisted and terrifying, but the battle never overshadows the individual stories; this remains a book about people and the beauty of books. While the narration swings from whimsical and hopeful to violent and despairing, the sense of wonder remains throughout.” —NJ.com
  • The Door to Lost Pages is about many things, certainly among them the process of growing up and coming to terms with life.” —SF Site
  • “A wondrous mix of mythology, fantasy, eroticism and adventure … Lalumière deftly presents each character’s tale with individual style and flair, making them equally distinctive and enjoyable …  superb intertwining of the fantastical and the real … The Door to Lost Pages is rich and textured with a mythology that is superbly fantastical and entirely absorbing … the overall effect is truly masterful … The very definition of weird and wonderful, The Door to Lost Pages is an enticing, enigmatic read.” —Fantasy Book Review
  • “[A] love letter to books and stories. It’s a book about being lost and all the varied meanings that simple word can espouse.” —King of the Nerds
  • “The book’s elusive quality is evocative of life itself; many paths open before us, each of them rich with possibility, but none of them is the right one and none of them guarantees either success, spiritual fulfillment or happiness. We all seek our own door into Lost Pages but each path to that door is different and the door will seem different to all those who manage to reach it.” —Strange Horizons
  • “Insanely imaginative … Lalumière’s talents are on full display in this cerebral, erotic, and hypnotically compelling tale of bibliophilic wonder.” —Publishers Weekly
  • “A fable for our times … layer upon layer of daydream and nightmare.” —The Montreal Gazette
  • “A weird, entrancing book informed by a unique vision.” —Quill & Quire
  • “For the reader willing to step into Lalumière’s fictional bookshop, Lost Pages, whole new worlds become accessible … 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
  • “Claude Lalumière evokes the dreaming mind, the subconscious, unconscious, superconscious, and the semi-permeable barrier between dream and reality becomes the space between one page and the next.” —Speculating Canada
  • “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 – the sheer enjoyment of storytelling…” —DLS Reviews
  • “A world completely built on imagination, but based on emotions that we as humans feel every day …  heart-breaking … An amazing story.” Teens Talk about Great Books, Times & Transcript
  • “There was nothing bland about this book.” —In one eye, out the other…
  • “Highly recommended.” —The Mad Hatter’s Booshelf & Book Review
  • “Quite unlike anything else you’ve read.” —January Magazine
  • “If I was stranded on a desert island and only had one book to read, I hope it would be this one.” —Martel Sardina’s Musings & Mad Peotry
  • “Eliciting a quiet sense of unease. Language and characters are put to deft – though dark – use … Particularly compelling.” —The King of Elfland’s Second Cousin
  • “The stories in The Door To Lost Pages have all been exquisitely crafted by Lalumière and readers cannot help but be drawn in to the worlds and lives he shows us. The stories are by turns funny, sad, bittersweet, and joyful.” —SFRevu
  • “It’s dark, it’s sexy, unconventional.” —The Left Hand of Dorkness.
  • “Rendered with gritty realism … the erotic and sexual elements that are often latent in fairy tales are more overt here as the characters wrestle with desires and both visceral and ethereal.” —Curiousworlds
  • The Door to Lost Pages is a love letter to books, book shops, and book sellers … it will remind you of what it was to be a chid discovering new worlds through stories — the excitement, the terror — while never letting you forget that that sense of excitement, that fear is still — and will always be — with you.” —Andre Farant: Adventure and Discovery through Writing and Travel