Book Review ~ What We've Lost is Nothing

With more books than ever vying to be read ~ we must be selective of how we choose to spend our time. There are just too many good books to waste time reading a bad one.

What We've Lost is Nothing is a first novel by Rachel Louise Snyder. It chronicles the twenty-four hours following a mass burglary in a Chicago suburb and the suspicions, secrets, and prejudices that surface in its wake.

From the back:
Nestled on the edge of Chicago’s gritty west side, Oak Park is a suburb in flux. To the west, theaters and shops frame posh houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. To the east lies a neighborhood still recovering from urban decline. In the center of the community sits Ilios Lane, a pristine cul-de-sac dotted with quiet homes that bridge the surrounding extremes of wealth and poverty.

On the first warm day in April, Mary Elizabeth McPherson, a lifelong resident of Ilios Lane, skips school with her friend Sofia. As the two experiment with a heavy dose of ecstasy in Mary Elizabeth’s dining room, a series of home invasions rocks their neighborhood. At first the community is determined to band together, but rising suspicions soon threaten to destroy the world they were attempting to create. Filtered through a vibrant pinwheel of characters, Snyder’s tour de force evokes the heightened tension of a community on edge as it builds toward one of the most explosive conclusions in recent fiction. Incisive and panoramic, What We’ve Lost is Nothing illuminates the evolving relationship between American cities and their suburbs, the hidden prejudices that can threaten a way of life, and the redemptive power of tolerance in a community torn asunder. 

We explore the impact this burglary has on an entire street, and we see the positive and negative effects felt by each household. There are several other families touched by these crimes, and each resident represents a particular aspect of society. Given the shear volume of characters, there’s not a lot of variety in these thoughts and reactions, making it difficult to remember who is whom? The problem is, the inner thoughts and outer reactions of the characters are about what you’d expect, given the circumstances. As information about the thefts circulate and different theories are shared, the crime itself is never solved.  Furthermore, the book tends to meander, and no one character was compelling enough to really captivate my interest.

At the end of the day, I didn’t really hate this book. The overall the writing is good, but the story suffers from a greater desire to make a point, and an inability to really make it.  This isn’t a bad book, necessarily, just an unfocused one.  Since this is her debut novel, I think this is an author with significant potential and I will be interested to see what she produces in the years to come. But What We’ve Lost is Nothing on the whole misses the mark.

Take Care