“Little Boy Lost” by Marghanita Laski
Marganita Laski’s Little Boy Lost was actually a gift for my husband G. Grod nearly six years ago. I was at the Persephone Books shop on Lamb’s Conduit Lane, chatting with Nicola, and told her I’d left my 9mo son at home with my husband to attend a friend’s wedding. She urged Laski’s book on me as a gift for him. Once I described it to him, though, G. had no interest in reading what sounded like his worst nightmare–a father’s search for his lost son during wartime.
(G is rather more the worrying parent than I am. Which is odd, since it’s contrary to our regular-life personalities.)
So LBL languished on the shelf these past several years. Recently Jessa Crispin at Bookslut read it, loved it, and reviewed it at NPR. The book inched into a forward part of my brain. Then when I read The Road last month for Books & Bars in Minneapolis, with its fraught portrayal of a father/son bond in a dangerous time, LBL jumped the queue.
It was not at all what I expected, which was something like a hard-working soldier returns from the war to find his young son missing, then goes off to find him, at all costs. Instead, Little Boy Lost is far more interesting and complex. Hilary Wainwright had an English desk job in the war. He learns his wife, who’s remained in France, has been killed by German troops, and believes his son dead, too. When he learns his son is lost and perhaps not dead, he can hardly bring himself to hope, as he’s so steeled himself against loss and disappointment. When an acquaintance tells him he has a lead, Hilary does not rush off, but instead waits until the war is over, and even then drags his feet, conflicted with guilt and duty.
It was nearly a year since Pierre had first written, and now Hilary had been demobilised for a week and his excuse no longer held good; and Pierre had lately written that he must come soon, if ever.
For he would never wish Pierre to know his deep unwillingness to undertake this search.
He said to himself, It’s been so long now since the boy was lost. I’ve had over two years to make myself invulnerable to emotion. I can do without comfort now. I am content to live in my memories. All that is important now is that no one should disturb my memories. (28-9)
Hilary meets an orphan boy named Jean who is the right age. But Jean remembers none of his past, and bears no resemblance to Hilary or his dead wife. Hilary struggles whether to take the boy even though he’s not sure Jean is his son. He longs for a simple, childless life with his present girlfriend in England after the war.
I’m used to the Mel Gibson/Liam Neeson revenge pic where someone’s child is kidnapped or killed, and the father tears off with vengeance. My husband assures me this is a modern plot constructed for corporately powerless cube jockeys like himself. Instead, LBL is a book of its time, post WWII. Like noir books and films of the same era, its hero is ambivalent, and complicated. There’s even sort of a femme fatale near the end who leads the hero astray. The tension about what will happen is drawn out skillfully to the very end, at which point the author pulls off one of the sharpest endings I’ve experienced. This book is a gem and a keeper, as well as a fascinating contrast to The Road.