The Door to Lost Pages
by Claude Lalumière
Step through the door to lost pages and escape a life you never wanted . . .
On her tenth birthday, Aydee runs away from home and from her neglectful parents. At first, surviving alone on the streets is harsh, but a series of frightening, bewildering encounters with strange primordial creatures leads her to a bookshop called Lost Pages, where she steps into a fantastic, sometimes dangerous, but exciting life. Aydee grows up at the reality-hopping Lost Pages, which seems to attract a clientele that is both eccentric and desperate. She is repeatedly drawn into an eternal war between enigmatic gods and monsters, until the day she is confronted by her worst nightmare: herself.
Reviews - What's Being Said About Claude Lalumière & The Door to Lost Pages
Insanely imaginative. . . Lalumière's talents are on full display in this cerebral, erotic, and hypnotically compelling tale of bibliophilic wonder.
–Publishers Weekly
A weird, entrancing book, informed by a unique vision. . . The doors of perception are occasionally blown outward in orgasmic epiphanies. . . it makes for a good trip.
–Alex Good, Quill and Quire
Lalumière is clearly comfortable with the trickier elements of horror and erotica, and knows when to step back at the right moment. Although the Lost Pages world is pure fantasy, it is no fantasy world. He may have found the most compassionate way to depict people on the edge of society, and that is to paint them as being lost to themselves—and to everyone else.
–Louise Fabiani, The Montreal Review of Books
In some ways the story reminds the reader of Carlos Ruiz Zaf√≥n’s The Angel’s Game meets Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with just a touch of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline thrown in for good measure. . . . Lalumière’s voice is clearly his own and The Door to Lost Pages is quite unlike anything else you’ve read.
–January Magazine
A fable for our times. . . Philip K. Dick channelling Jean-Paul Sartre and Yukio Mishima. . . layer upon layer of daydream and nightmare.
–François Lauzon, The Montreal Gazette
Pick up this book and open your own door to Lost Pages—you might find something inside that you didn't know existed.
–The Winnipeg Review
Elegant dark fantasy saturated with phantasmagoric imagery, skillfully wrapped around meta-narrative structures . . . Due to Lalumière’s subtle characterization, Aydee can take a deserved place alongside other intrepid dark fantasy heroines such as Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and Candy Quackenbush from Clive Barker’s Abarat series.
–The Portal
The stories in The Door To Lost Pages have all been exquisitely crafted by Lalumière and readers cannot help but be drawn in to the worlds and lives he shows us. The stories are by turns funny, sad, bittersweet, and joyful . . . . Anyone who enjoys at least slightly dark fantasy should enjoy The Door To Lost Pages.
–SFRevu
Claude Lalumière reveals the mythology of his world in pieces, often through nested stories. Encounters with the forces of evil are twisted and terrifying, but the battle never overshadows the individual stories; this remains a book about people and the beauty of books. While the narration swings from whimsical and hopeful to violent and despairing, the sense of wonder remains throughout.
–NJ.com
The author’s unquestionably excitable imagination is breath-taking, if not utterly refreshing. Leave your worries at the door and walk on into the fantastical world where magic and mystery lie hand-in-hand with the beating heart of humanity and the limitless questions within the universe . . . This is a novella to become quickly and unconsciously lost within. Its open expanse of lovingly created passages into dreamlike stages of life, immerse the reader in the unobstructed enjoyment of storytelling. And that’s what it always seems to come back to here. The utter and unashamed enjoyment of storytelling. And that pretty much sums up the book ‚Äì the sheer enjoyment of storytelling...
–Christopher A. Hall, DLS Reviews
Erotic, wise, comic, tragic . . . it's involving fiction of the most intimate and passionate stripe!
–From the introduction by Paul Di Filippo
