The other reviews describe the book well. Conceptually, a wonderful idea, but then the execution is not explained at all, leaving your stumbling through the first few chapters wondering what is going on. When written as a non-fiction entry, the results are positive (the chapter on Sappho sticks in the mind), but when used as the basis of a short story, it’s hard to understand the significance, and the dots are hard to connect. Beautiful language, but let down from the structure and form.

There's a joke about writers finding a way to make their short stories connect so that they can pass them off as a novel. Well, that joke became a reality here. A series of chapters that are either short stories or short polemics which revolve around the wafer thin theme of loss and time and history and blah blah yawn.

I honestly haven't been bored by a book quite as badly as I was by this one. At first glance, the writing is very good (neat and tidy) and you feel as though there is meaningful content but as the novelty value of the book continues (sporadic looks at the past that have no real connection to one another) you begin to feel drained, as though the writer is somehow stealing all the love, energy, and optimism from your very soul. Even when the book has mildly interesting chapters (actual narratives as opposed to polemics and half-formed thoughts about the human condition), it still somehow manages to fail because as soon as that chapter is over, you are instantly asked to abandon it and embrace the next thoroughly tedious chapter which is bone dry and banal. At no point can you invest in anything, not even a character who runs, like a thread, through the book. It's all just idiotic nonsense that goes nowhere masquerading as something profound and beautiful. One chapter was essentially just the narrator describing foliage and trees and animals -- like I've never encountered any of that before.

I liked the idea of the book: an inventory of things that we have lost or forgotten over the centuries, but I just don't think Schalansky had the talent to turn that into something significant or worthwhile. I was genuinely bored. It honestly did feel like nothing more than a series of jumbled thoughts thrown together without any creativity or vision into a half-baked novel. At moments, W.G. Sebald's influence can definitely be felt but where he would take you on a fascinating (at least worthwhile) historical tangent, Schalansky only manages to make the past seem dry, intangible and brittle.

The only praise I can give the book is the physical book itself. A beautiful thing with a font of gold and chapters that are separated by a black page with a faded image within it. But that's it, though. That's all I can say as a positive.

Loved the concept and all the nonfiction here. But then the fiction didn't always work for me and at times felt self-indulgent. I would have loved to have read a whole nonfiction book on this topic by her. An ambitious work that didn't deliver what I had hoped.

From the cover a review "Utterly fascinating" - 100% agree. The concept and thinking were very fun to read, for me, some stories more compelling than others. The idea of wrapping a historical loss (e.g. extinct species, a building that was razed, etc.) with a short, related story, was so well executed and interesting.

Eine kuriose Sammlung an Essays und Erzählungen über Verlorenes der Geschichte. Sprachlich unglaublich überzeugend, thematisch mal mehr, mal weniger packend.

A beautiful book that I unfortunately didn’t have the patience for

DNF at page 65 for a couple reasons. I don't know if it was an issue with translation or the way the writer actually writes but this was nearly impossible to get through. Most of the sentences were way too long. A page length paragraph would sometimes be only 2 or 3 sentences. And when describing something, there would be what felt like just a list of adjectives.

I like the premise of the book, but that's not at all what it is. I read through the second chapter and neither chapters really talked about the disappearance of the two things. The chapter about the island talked more about the island next door. The chapter about the tiger talked about Roman gladiator fights.

1/5 would not recommend.