Our Lady of The Lost And Found

by Diane Schoemperlen

The book jacket reviews call it "one of the most charming novels you're likely to read this year," (New Orleans Times-Picayune) and I have to say that I'd agreee.

The novel opens with the narrator becoming the author - who never reveals her name - as she writes the account of what has just happened to her over the course of a week she has spent with her new friend, Mary.....

.......as in, Mary, the Virgin; Mary, the Blessed Mother; Mary, who has been appearing to those in need for many, many years and is in need of a respite from it all.

That Mary.

So what initially seemed like a quirky, light read soon finds interesting questions brought to mind as the friendship between Mary and the author develops.

The novel runs between the author revealing bits of herself to Mary, spliced with historical accounts of Mary appearing to others in their time of need. We also see the development of Mary as a real, and witty at that, person- the kind that, as the author does, you might hang out at the mall with cracking jokes as the expense of the woman selling anti-aging cream ("Heaven forbid that a woman should look her age, Mary said, slipping her arm through mine. Imagine what that stuff could do for me. I'm two thousand years old and don't look a day over two hundred.")

I also found it extremely interesting how well the author developed the narrator's character, given the hinderance of never knowing her name. Instead, she chooses to divulge small insights into the narrators life throughout the book as well as lovely descriptive aside passages that help us develop a sense of her without naming her, for example, a passage setting the scene of doing a household chore while having a conversation:

"Ironing, I can honestly say, is one household chore that I do truly enjoiy. I find it relaxing and comforting; the smooth pointed glide of the iron, the steam hot smell of the fabric, the tug of the muscles in my upper arm. I still use a heavy steam iron that must be twenty years old now. I bought a new one once, not bcause there was anything wrong with the old one but just because I thought it was time. But I found it unsatisfying. It was too light in my hand, altogether lacking the serious and stalwart heft of the old one, so I returned it to the store with a flimsy excuse, got my money back, and caried on happily as before."

Seriously, I love this. I love this woman and her flimsy excuse and her crazy old steam iron.

There was one particular, longer passage about finding things that I loved towards the middle of the book, as well, which sums up quite a bit about the book for me.

"This new proliferation of Marys in my life would seem to bige lie to the popular nothiong that you are most likely to find something when you're not looking for it. This idea is most often offered in the spirit of consolation and encouragement to a single woman looking for a man and repeatedly coming up empty-handed and/or broken-hearted.

-Don't worry, people say. You'll find him when you least expect it. Once you stop looking, you'll find him for sure.

These well-meaning advisors may or may not go on to mention how a watched pot never boils.

In light of my recent experience of running into Mary everywhere I turn, it now seems to me that, much as the old notion of finding something when you're not looking for it has often been proved true, the opposite is also equally true: you find what you are looking for. Sometimes, once your blinders have been removed, you find it over and over again.

So there was Mary: on television, in newspapers and magazines, in a friend's neighborhood, in my stamp collection, at the beauty salon, the grocery store, and my favorite downtown restaurant.

And, on a Thursday afternoon in April, there she was among the lawn ornaments just where she had always been. If only I had thought to look."

Look. Read. Enjoy.