The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly, currently on theJunior Cycle prescribed list, recommended by the NCCA for 2nd and 3rd years, describes horrifc scenes of bondage and torture and promotes bestiality. In chapters XVI and XVII, a huntress captures and performs “surgery” on people and animals, in which she chops, then fuses their body parts together to form new entities. “I thought how wonderful it would be if I could combine the body of an animal with the intelligence of a human”. No anaesthetic is given. The room in which the torture and “surgery” is carried out is described in graphic detail with tables
“ ...stained with blood…….chains and manacles upon them, and leather restraints.To one side of the table was a rack of knives and blades and surgical tools”. All around the room are mounted heads, both of animals and humans. “David turned his head and saw dried meat hanging from hooks at the other end of the room. He could not tell if it came from animals or people”.
Bottles and jars on shelves contain a variety of body parts and the story’s main character, David, is shown a girl’s head after it has been removed from its body, and mounted on a piece of dark wood:
“Her hair had been washed and spread out upon the block,held in place by a thin glue. Her eyes had been removed and replaced …... Her skin had been coated with a waxy substance to preserve it, and her head made a hollow sound when the huntress rapped upon it with her knuckles”.
Eventually the huntress persuades David to sever her in half, threatens to eat him alive, and subsequently “...the animals fell upon her, tearing and biting, ripping and shredding, as David turned away from the grisly sight and fled into the forest”
Butchered children and decapitated bodies are randomly described and severed heads are continually featured and used in the story.
The huntress, an adult,kisses her victim, a minor, on the lips and exposes herself to him, totally naked, as she chains him to the table and falls asleep on a pallet beside him.
Bloody, torn flesh and graphic gore and violence, combined with sexual scenes, make up a substantial part of this book. David, a minor, is even unwittingly lured into a sexual scenario involving his mother/step-mother.
Bestiality is promoted in chapter IX where “women go willingly to lie with wolves” and in chapter XX when a young knight does not wish to give physical love to a woman-beast, she
“raised her head and bared her sharp teeth at him. She hissed at the knight, then sprang upon him, biting him, scratching him, ripping him with her claws, the taste of blood warm in her mouth, the feel of it hot upon her fur. And she tore him apart in her bedchamber, and she wept as she consumed him”.
In chapter XXIX “a bedchamber contained a naked woman and a naked man and the Crooked man would bring children to them…..and the man and the woman would whisper things to them in the darkness of their chamber, telling them things that children should not know, dark tales of what adults did together in the depths of the night….”
Verdict: Who in their right mind would want their child reading this rot? Let’s fight to get this book removed from our classrooms….
(John D. Co.Limerick,Dad to 3 teenage sons)
Verdict: What?? You can’t be serious……..this is unbelievable. I will NEVER allow my kids to read this book. It should be taken off the curriculum!
(Martin/Pauline, Co.limerick)
Verdict: Disgusting. Off the wall. Totally inappropriate for junior OR Senior cycle. Are they trying to turn our children into zombie murderers who have sex with their Step-mother and chop people up for the fun of it ??!!! Where is the literature in that? I think the NCCA have made a serious error in judgement!
(James & Teresa B. Co.Cork, parents of 4 teenage sons)
It is genuinely worrying to think that we have reached a point in our society where adults could actually think that it will benefit children in some way to read material like this.
Amanda P, Co. Sligo