Book Review

The Lost Ones by Anita Frank

CW: The death of a child, sexual assault, suicidal ideation

The Lost Ones by Anita Frank lured me in with the promise of a Gothic set in WWI, but the pacing was massively slow and the characters largely unlikeable. As a result, I only finished the book because I needed resolution on the ghostly portion.

This book actually made me grind my teeth, and at one point my cat, Dewey, shut the book on me and insisted on therapeutic nose boops.

My cat Dewey sits with is paw on the cover of the book, closing it on me
As I said earlier, this book is set in the midst of WWI. Stella Marcham had been working in France as a nurse, until her fiancé is killed in combat and she is sent home to grieve. Stella is overcome with grief, and tries to kill herself but her maid, Annie Burrows, saves her.

The relationship between Annie and Stella was one of the things that made my teeth super grindy, but I’ll touch more on that later.

Anyway, Stella’s sister, Madeline, asks her to come stay with her at her husband’s family seat, Greyswick. Madeline is pregnant with her first child, and her husband, Hector, implies that she’s been uneasy since she’s already had a miscarriage. He thinks Stella’s company will be comforting to Madeline.

When Stella arrives at Greyswick, she realizes something is amiss. Madeline isn’t sleeping and tells her that she hears a crying child at night, even though there are no children in the house. Stella and Annie hear the nightly wailing as well, and Stella begins to find toy soldiers left on her bed.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the house is being haunted by a child. If spooky child-ghosts are not your thing, do not read this book. It will freak you out.

A big issue for me was that it took us 125 pages to get to Greyswick and establish that it was haunted. That’s a really slow build up for a Gothic and the lack of suspense in the beginning made me wonder if I’d misread the jacket copy and this was actually historical fiction. I was relieved when the ghost child showed up. After that the plot still progressed more slowly than most Gothics, but it had a little more steam to give it some momentum.

So Madeline, Stella and Annie are suitably freaked out by supernatural occurrences in the house. Hector (who is stationed at a desk job in London cuz he’s rich) decides to come home with his friend Mr. Sheers and disprove the whole haunting thing. Despite the fact that three women have independently confirmed that they’ve heard the ghost, and in one case felt its touch, Hector and Mr. Sheers attribute their experiences to 1. pregnancy hormones 2. grief and 3. she’s a servant girl so she’s probably daft. Which is to say, womenfolk, what are you gonna do, right? They’re all hysterical and emotional.

This form of dismissal and gaslighting would piss me off even if the women in question had banded together, but they don’t. As shitty as Hector and Mr Sheers are to Stella, Stella is worse to Annie, and that’s what really set me off.

From the beginning of the book Stella reflects that her maid is odd and slightly otherworldly. Annie talks to herself, which doesn’t seem especially weird to me but I have full on conversations with my cats. Stella wishes she could dismiss Annie, who hasn’t actually done anything wrong in the performance of her job, purely because she’s odd. She can’t though because Annie’s father died saving Stella’s sister from a house fire, and the family feels obligated to give her employment.

Let’s just digest that shittiness for a moment. Annie does her job just fine. Stella wants to fire her because she’s a little strange, but feels obligated to give her the gift of a job.

Well, fuck you very much.

It becomes obvious very early in the book that Annie has some connection to the spirit world, a fact that Annie does not want revealed as she feels it will make her an outcast or a subject of ridicule. Stella all but forces her to reveal her gift through constant badgering and emotional manipulation. Stella doesn’t treat Annie like a person, but rather as a tool to be used to solve the mystery of the ghost. At one point Annie breaks down sobbing due to the stress of how she’s being treated.

There’s a power dynamic between Stella and Annie that is very much not in Annie’s favor, and it seems the reader is expected to accept this based on their class differences. When discussing why he thinks the haunting isn’t real, Mr. Sheers lays the blame largely at Annie’s feet and sums up the attitude every character seems to have regarding her relationship to Stella:

“In light of this lingering fantasy, I think the transference of “supernatural” power to Burrow’s daughter is perfectly understandable. However, I do think that for her–an insignificant young girl who is never likely to amount to much–having someone like you, a lady, her mistress, bestow such abilities upon her and then believe the stories she makes up to promote the idea…well, I’m sure she must find it intoxicating.”

Annie doesn’t find it intoxicating. She doesn’t want to talk about her supernatural abilities at all. Stella has to pry information out of her. At one point Annie, under the prompting of Stella to help investigate, has a vision of a dead baby. Hector and Madeline’s housekeeper, Mrs Henge, thinks she’s acting out for attention and being morbid, and actually physically abuses her while she sobs.

Then Stella has the actual goddamn nerve to think:

With mounting excitement, I shared my plan with Annie, pacing her draughty room, the wind pushing against the tiny window with its paltry view of roof tiles and a hint of sky. When I stopped, bright-eyed and enthused, I looked at the dejected figure hunched on the bed and felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. She had been a queer but contented creature until I had wedged a knife under the lip of her shell and prised it open, determined to find the pearl hidden within. Now she said there, exposed, hollowed out and alone–haunted by the dead and shunned by the living–and it was all my doing.

“You should come with me,” I blurted out. The dried trails of tears caught the light as she turned her face to me. She looked so lost, so fragile. I knew what it was to conceal one’s true self, how difficult and isolating it could be. I was in a unique position to help Annie Burrows–my company could be a haven where she could finally be herself.

Oh barf.

Stella feels guilt for how she treated Annie, but she never apologizes or tries to make amends. The above paragraph is as far as she lets herself get before dismissing her role in Annie’s physical and emotional harm. Stella is supposed to be the hero here, but her treatment of Annie is abusive and cruel. Stella gets her arc as she works through her grief, but Annie remains in the same place in the end of the book as she was in the beginning–working for a mistress who has little regard for her. Annie is a mechanism to tell a ghost story, not a real person.

I think that’s what bothered me most of all and left me so disappointed in this book. In Gothics there is a convention where women experience something supernatural but are not believed by those around them until the end of the story when they achieve vindication and are proven right. Stella believes in Annie’s visions, but Annie is not vindicated in any way. She is still going back to live with an abuser; she has little agency and really no voice. Essentially Annie suffers for nothing while Stella is allowed an emotional journey. It’s a thoroughly dissatisfying story that left me with pity for Annie and disgust at Stella.

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The Lost Ones by Anita Frank

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  1. Kelly L. says:

    Yuck! This sounds awful, and also like it really should have been told as Annie’s story.

  2. Cristie says:

    Holy crap this sounds awful. Definitely won’t be touching this one. Thanks for the warning/review.

  3. Susanna says:

    Who’s a good kitty? Dewey is! (And a pretty one, too.)

  4. Laura Ann Klein says:

    I’m glad Dewey rescued you from this book. I need Dewey to keep me away from the news.

    The Magdalen Girls was a difficult but worthwhile read. Difficult because of the subject and the situation these young women are in and the place they are forced to live. But just like the review says, it is great story of friendship, too.

  5. Kris Bock says:

    MOAR SNOOT BOOPS!

  6. Jeanne says:

    WAKENHYRST by Michelle Paver is a gothic novel set in a similar time period and with a female protagonist, but without the things that made this book so infuriating. I really loved it. CW for miscarriage, and some period-typical attitudes to women.

  7. Louise says:

    Coincidentally I just arrived here from Cover Awe, where the present book would have fit right in. If a good book can have an awful cover (see: all too many Cover Snark submissions over the years), then why shouldn’t a not-so-good book have a lovely cover?

  8. Kareena says:

    How curious! Isn’t it interesting how our reading experiences are so subjective. I read a completely different book. I found “The Lost Ones” subtle, beautifully written, true to the period and a very atmospheric ghost story. It was one of my best reads of 2019.

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