MICHELLE DE KRETSER

Tom Loxley is holed up in a remote cottage in the bush, when his dog goes missing, trailing a length of orange twine, tied with firm knots. Tom`s lonely childhood in India taught him to tie knots but not to hold on. This novel explores the weight of history as well as different ways of seeing and trying to grasp the world.

Montsignac, en el sur de Francia, año 1789. A la sombra de las convulsiones que desencadenará la Revolución Francesa, la autora construye una historia repleta de pasiones: Sophie Saint Pierre, entregada al cultivo de una nueva variedad de rosa; Claire, de aspecto angelical, casada con un odioso aristócrata; la pequeña y vivaz Matilde y el norteamericano Stephen, que se enamora de Claire sin corresponder a los sentimientos de la bella cultivadora de rosas. Una fértil trama de amores y desamores, de traciones y denuncias que se solapará de forma perfecta con los acontecimientos revolucionarios, narrada con sensibilidad, elegancia y una cuidada ambientación histórica.

Tom Loxley is holed up in a remote cottage in the bush, trying to finish a book on Henry James and the Uncanny when his dog goes missing, trailing a length of orange twine, tied with firm knots. Tom's lonely childhood in India taught him to tie knots but not to hold on ...The house belongs to Nelly Zhang, an elusive artist with whom Tom has become enthralled. The narrative spans ten days while Tom searches for his dog ...and loops back in time to take the reader on a breathtaking journey into glittering worlds far beyond the present tragedy, from an Anglo-Indian childhood to the brittle contemporary Melbourne art scene, from Tom's scratchy, unbearably poignant relationship with his ailing mother to the unanswered puzzles in Nelly's past - her husband also disappeared in the bush. And the reader fears for Tom as well as for the dog. Set in present-day Australia and mid-20th century India, here is a haunting, layered work that vividly counterpoints new cityscapes and their inhabitants with the untamed continent beyond. With its atmosphere of menace and an acute sense of the unexplained in any story, it illuminates the collision of the wild and the civilised, modernity and the past, home and exile. "The Lost Dog" is a mystery and a love story, an exploration of art and nature, a meditation on ageing and the passage of time. It is a book of wonders: a gripping contemporary novel which examines the weight of history as well as different ways of trying to grasp the world.