Lost Girls explores the experiences of women and girls as they grieve, find love, face uncertainty, take a stand, find their future, and say goodbye to the past. A young woman creates a ritual to celebrate the life of a kidnapped girl, an unmarried woman wanders into a breast feeder's support group and stays, a grieving mother finds solace in an unlikely place, a young girl discovers more than she bargained for when she spies on her neighbors.
Blink and you won’t be able to figure out how she does it. But then, don’t blink. Stare as hard as you can. Retrace favorite paragraphs and lines and still be mystified about her pointillistic ability to create the images and lines that take the breath out of your body and create the unforgettable lost girls ... Even when they can begin to discern the magician’s obvious and ordinary tricks, they still seek to find a form of extraordinary magic to trust in and live through.
The female characters in Lost Girls both startle and uplift us, but most importantly they demand to be seen ... While these stories do feature experiences of repression and loss, they do not focus so much on the traumas as the resilience of the women surviving them. A quiet defiance pulses throughout the work ... Through vivid snapshots of female struggle, Morris demonstrates the power of women acknowledging one another — and themselves — in a world where they are continually diminished.
Each story is realistic, entirely accessible. Some come perilously close to being merely anecdotes, recordings of remembered events. The best involve a moment of acceptance, illumination or even revenge ... highly readable. The stories are varied—not all painful or grotesque and the book deserves a readership.
