Certain catchwords – ‘quirky’, ‘heartwarming’, ‘uplifting’ – mark the media coverage surrounding the release of Western Australian Brooke Davis’s first novel, Lost & Found. Perhaps foreseeing this, Davis presents her twee characters in a slightly laboured, albeit fashionable, manner: the elderly Karl in colourful braces; the agoraphobic widow Agatha; and Millie Bird, a Disneyesque seven-year-old grieving for her lost parents while camping out in a closed department store. All three protagonists come together for an unlikely adventure across Davis’s palpable, yet homogenous, Australian outback.
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