A very moving, powerful modern tale, that feels very of the moment given the current political going’s on. Luiselli is a master storyteller, weaving different families stories together, different journeys but with certain similarities. A breathtaking account of love, family, desperation.

Loved how Luiselli balances an intimate portrait of a family pulling apart against broader landscapes (both geographical and political). A really interesting take on the road trip genre and some truly beautiful passages of prose.

received this book as an ARC from netgalley and I am not sure if i would have picked it up in a bookshop but I am very glad I have had the opportunity to read it.

This is a book with the most interesting narrative style that I have read for a long time. None of the characters are named although the children both use nicknames with each other. There are stories within stories some of which were difficult to grasp but all of which drove the narrative forward. The characters take on a journey in more ways than one. Quite apart from the journeys to record a "soundscape" of native Americans or examine the plight of children lost in their escape from Mexico to America there is a personal journey on the part of the characters.

It is very complex at times I felt they were selfless and encompassed life in the ways they interacted with each other and at times it felt as though they were very selfish.

There was a point in the book when I felt it lost its way a little - where the boy started to tell the story to the girl but the author did bring it back and i can see why it was done this way.

I am not sure how i would categorise this book - perhaps "Faction" as it reads as a novel with a strong basis in fact

A wonderful novel - so steeped in literature.

My (lengthy) review is here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2745061270 so I won't reproduce it on this site, other than to say 'read this book'

“Lost Children Archive” must have one of the most unusual structures for a novel that I’ve read in a long time. It seems natural that Valeria Luiselli’s first novel written in English would chiefly concern the plight of immigrant children as her extended essay “Tell Me How It Ends” so powerfully laid out this harrowing dilemma. Since politicians often turn immigration into an abstract political debate, Luiselli has a tremendous ability for highlighting and reminding us how this is above all a human rights issue and makes us see the humans effect. The ramifications for children who are adrift and literally wandering blindly through this landscape with stringently guarded borders are incalculable because when they become lost in a political system “They are children who have lost the right to a childhood.” In this novel she expands this understanding and creates an artful story which traverses time and space to illuminate a new way of looking at what happens when our society loses its children.

At its centre, this is a road trip novel about a husband and wife driving with their son and daughter across America. They’re engaged in a project to capture and record the sounds of the country to better understand its nature of being. The couple’s relationship is also disintegrating and the closer they come to their destination the closer this family comes to separating. What begins as a deeply-felt intellectual reflection about the ways we negotiate children’s place in our lives turns into a tense search for those who have gone missing with hallucinatory twists. It sounds confusing and I’m still puzzling over the experience of it, but this innovative novel shines with so much humanity I found it utterly compelling and engaging.

Luiselli writes endearingly about private moments of family life – especially when confined in the restricted space of a car for most of the day. There are funny moments which take the mother out of her brooding and serious concern: “Children’s words, in some ways, are the escape route out of family dramas, taking us to their strangely luminous underworld, safe from our middle-class catastrophes.” It’s interesting how there’s a sense that this family is somewhat new to each other since both the father’s son and the mother’s daughter are children from previous relationships, but their bond and connection to each other is so strong. There is also a constant feeling of their anonymity since none of these family members are named (except for the girl who is nicknamed Memphis by the son when they pass through the Tennessee city.) The mother who narrates the first half of the book frequently makes up stories about their lives to tell the strangers they meet amidst their journey. So all these aspects of the book build a sense that they are both everyone and no one belonging everywhere and nowhere.

One of the ways the parents try to entertain (and distract) the children during their long car rides is to play an audio book of “Lord of the Flies”. The narrative of Golding’s tremendous novel has a powerful effect on the son who takes the story’s messages about struggle and survival to heart. But it also shows how Luiselli is forming a dialogue with the narratives of classic stories to come to a new understanding of how we structure society and the core values that should serve as the base of its foundations. “Lost Children Archive” additionally references and converses with the ideas of writers such as Walt Whitman, Jack Kerouac and Susan Sontag. There’s also a fictional book called “Elegies for Lost Children” in the mother’s possession which she reads aloud from and it’s quoted from at length in the novel itself. It’s the story of a band of children’s struggle to arrive at a new home while riding atop dangerous trains and being led by tyrannical guides.

These stories are narrated aloud and they meld with radio news they listen to about the growing Mexican-American border crisis and reports of illegal migrant children being flown out of the country. The mother is particularly preoccupied with these children’s futures, but the father is more concerned with the past as their ultimate destination is the southwest where he wants to search for any lingering sounds of decimated Native American tribes. In a sense the parents are tragically outside of the present and their anxiety over how to document the experiences of these displaced people reflect a general feeling that “Something changed in the world. Not too long ago, it changed, and we know it. We don’t know how to explain it yet, but I think we all can feel it, somewhere deep in our gut or in our brain circuits. We feel time differently… We haven’t understood how space and time exist now, how we really experience them. And until we find a way to document them, we will not understand them.” Equipped only with their instincts and some boxes of scattered maps, books and tools, the family are on a quest to learn how to capture this experience of the present. Until then, their ultimate endpoint and sense of home remains perilously uncertain – just as it does for all of us.

This is an absolutely fascinating, clever and complex novel which takes seriously the personal impact of politics and gives a new way of looking at the bonds of family.

"Children force parents to go out looking for a specific pulse, a gaze, a rhythm, the right way of telling the story, knowing that stories don't fix anything or save anyone but maybe make the world both more complex and more tolerable. And sometimes, just sometimes, more beautiful. Stories are a way of subtracting the future from the past, the only way of finding clarity in hindsight."

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli tells the story of an unnamed married couple and their children on a journey from New York to Arizona. The couple originally meet when they are both working on a soundscape documentary about the different languages that are spoken in New York. Once this project is finished, the husband decides he wants to travel to Apacheria to document the history of the Apaches, whilst the wife wants to write about the 'lost children' trying to cross the US-Mexico border, which includes two of her friend's children who have gone missing.

The story is told through multiple layers containing snippets of sounds, songs, books, literary references and pictures, as if the novel itself is the archive of the family's journey. This journey and interwoven narratives, along with the unnamed protagonist is a powerful reference to what is currently happening in the US with child refugees trying to cross the border and portrays the harsh realities of detention centres and the perilous journeys these children are making. The emotion and underlying anger of what is happening to the 'lost children' relates to Luiselli's last book, Tell Me How It Ends, which is an essay collection about the experiences of child refugees.

Lost Children Archive is a beautifully written and impassioned novel. It has been a long time since I read a book that wowed me this much and now I'm absolutely desperate to read more of Luiselli's work. Can't recommend enough.

I'm in two minds about this book. It's very topical. It's written well but I really struggled with the beginning of the story, not knowing whether to continue or not. In the end I'm glad I did.

I was sent a copy of Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli to read and review by NetGalley.
When I first started reading this book I wasn’t at all sure that I would like it or indeed finish it! The first section is from the viewpoint of what turned out to be ‘The Mother’ and to me read very much more like an essay than a novel. It seemed to me to feel quite distanced or detached as the other characters were illustrated with the names ‘My Husband’ ‘The Boy’ and ‘The Girl’. A good deal of the story is taken up with factual and anecdotal information regarding Geronimo and the last Apache Indians, along with stories of the Lost children of the title, which pertain to the migration of children from Central America and Mexico to the USA. The story picks up pace in the latter half of the book when we hear the voice of ‘The Boy’ who at 10 years old is narrating for his 5 year old sister his version of this epic road trip together. The Boy’s story interweaves what we have learnt of the trip from the adults with his own understanding of events and culminates with the children’s own adventure, which is quite intense. This is quite a complex novel which once finished stays with you and makes you think – which can only be a good thing.

This is without doubt the strangest 3rd person told story I have ever read and I'm completely at a loss what the point of the story was. Just strange...

Some books are written so beautifully that you have to prolong the reading experience by rationing the pages - Lost Children Archive is one of those books. I cherished the experience of reading it and living through their summer - each voice so distinct and haunting in different ways. I am sure this book with do very well with shortlists and longlists this award year.

You were not even level A because you confused the letters b and d, and also the letters g and p, and when I showed you a book and asked you what do you see here on this page? you said, I don’t know, and when I said what do you at least imagine? you said that you pictured all the little letters jumping and splashing like all the kids in our neighborhood when they finally opened the swimming pool and let us swim there.


I read this online, in a Netgalley review copy for the phone and I think that might affect my review. The book circles ideas of archiving and recording, as a "blended" family makes a trip South to record for a documentary (her) and for one of those academic projects that is on the slightly bonkers end of the spectrum (him). Travelling with two small children, the first half is her narrating the journey alongside her increasing awareness that the relationship is over, and at their destination she will take her child and he will take his (always referred to as "The girl" and "The boy"). The journey is long, in parts dull, and sometimes scary (police asking for papers). Along the way Luiselli builds up a picture of the family, mum map reading, dad trying to interest the kids in stories of Native American histories as part of his work, and the (older) boy taking pictures with his new instant camera, whilst the five year old amusingly misunderstands much of what is going on.
The mother's research project is linked to the missing children travelling the rail lines from Mexico. The boy absorbs the story and makes a dramatic decision.

The book includes images, lists and many quotes: I suspect a beautiful print edition might have swayed me more towards a positive response. There are some lovely passages, sections that made me think, but I can't forgive it for a very long central section that made me want to give up!

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

I am looking for a redeeming feature of this book. Still looking...

It was a long way to the end. There was no hook or lead to make you want to keep reading. No one had names other than Ma, Pa, Boy and Girl. Eventually, Girl is called Memphis, a nickname only the boy uses.

On a long car drive to the west, Pa tells stories about the Apaches, and Ma tells stories about the Lost Children who die trying to get over the southern border into the United States. She is searching for two in particular. Their own children, however, are virtually ignored all day, and listen with boredom (as did I), making up games to pass the endless hours in the car.

Eventually, the 5 and 10 year old set out alone in the desert to find these Lost Children, with Boy thinking that if they get lost, maybe the parents will care enough to come looking for them too. Boy never talks directly to Memphis on this journey. He only recalls their adventure to her, and to us, from inside his own head.

One star is the best I can give this book, which I think will only appeal to a very few readers.

A very powerful and impressive novel! I recommend reading Luiselli's essay 'Tell Me How It Ends' first, in order to get all the facts beforehand and to understand the political situation in the US better. Both books have largely the same subject matter: child migrants crossing the border from Mexico to the US, traveling dangerously on freight trains, risking their lives, hoping to reach a family member once they arrive in the US. It is als a book about how native Americans have mostly disappeared from American society, or rather: were removed. And it is about a marriage falling apart, about wanting other things, silence and not knowing how to reach each other anymore.

A couple and their children (aged 5 and 10) are making a road trip from New York to the Arizona-Mexican border. The father is following the trail of the Apaches and recording remnants of their lives; the mother is collecting material for an essay on child migrants. Whilst traveling they are telling stories, listen to music or the audiobook 'Lord of the Flies.' I liked the fact that the parents communicate with their children as if they are more or less grown up, which makes for interesting conversations and point of views. These children are curious, smart and very likable and I just love how great the brother and sister are together.

The book can be a bit intellectual at times with loads of literary references and different narrative techniques, which some people may find annoying, but I rather liked. It also has something to teach us, but in such a way that it never feels imposed. It's a book that made me angry, sad and occasionally had me close to tears. It will stay with me for quite some time...

Thank you very much for the ARC.

This is a stunning story – absolutely appropriate for our times and with multiple layers of meaning. I believe that it is her first book in English (the previous ones were published in Spanish initially) and it is well worth seeking out. I’d be tempted to give it the Booker Prize as well!

At first sight, it isn’t an easy text. The structure of the book into four parts sub-sectioned into boxes (among other things), the intertextuality that pervades the story, the different observational standpoints and the constant references to something else you should have read all makes for a challenge. This isn’t a straightforward narrative!

The heart of the story is a road journey across America to the Mexican border undertaken by a nameless man and wife and their two nameless children. The husband wants to relocate in order to record Apache soundscapes but the relationship with his wife is all but broken and she intends to leave him there and start a new project back in New York. The wife and, later, the son document the journey.

The story of the journey is intermingled with another journey told in a series of ‘elegies’ about a group of Latin American children being slowly smuggled towards the United States border with some vague hope of finding relatives there, and the concerns of the liberal wife for a friend of a friend whose two daughters may have been ‘lost’ making this journey. The long car journey is interspersed with the father’s stories of the Apache Indians and Geronimo, and the repetitive playing of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ and an audio tape of ‘Lord of the Flies’. Ultimately, after travelling for many days in the ‘tin can’ of their Volvo the two children go off on their own, living the primitive life of the boys in the audiobook and they become lost as the two ‘lost children narratives’ coincide.

I love the children in the story who are so well drawn from the start that the almost symbolic climax is believable. Most readers would want to take them to a place of safety as far away from their deluded parents as soon as possible. The father records sounds, allegedly randomly but assuming that from multiple recordings some kind of reality will emerge. He is hopelessly wrong as he stumbles around with his microphone boom and headphones accidentally objectifying his surroundings by what he selects. He is somehow lost as well.

The wife is in a lost relationship selfishly pursuing her own liberal ideals, full of self-analysis and righteousness while accidentally neglecting the children. I didn’t like her either. Perhaps other readers will look more kindly on the parents but they seem to be embedded in, and are perhaps the products of, a culture where nastiness to children has constantly featured – the book provides the evidence.

The elegies about the other children are haunting and harrowing. The construction of the narrative means that you keep returning to them and sense the passing of time as they make this desperate journey with little sense of where they are and what is happening while being coerced along by men whose only interest is being paid for their delivery. This part of the story doesn’t end well. It is tragically where fiction collides with documentary and the contemporary world and it is hard not to be moved.

Having read some reviews before I started this book readers either loved it or hated it. Therefore I wasn’t sure what to expect. But This wasn’t a book for me. A very different style of writing which seemed rather cold and nameless even though there are some key relevant issues and messages such as immigration. I love to get to know characters which was difficult in this instance., nameless people and nameless sounds. Don’t let me put you off if you’re looking for something different.

Disappointing. I really wanted to enjoy this book. The issue of unaccompanied young children trying to find safety by undertaking hazardous journeys from one country to another is something that needs to be highlighted and addressed. But unfortunately this novel left me cold and I had to stop reading about 25% of the way through. It didn't live up to the hype and was neither interesting, moving or entertaining.

Unfortunately, this novel illustrates the difference between well-intentioned and well executed: Luiselli writes about the plight of migrants trying to cross the border between Mexico and the US, especially children making this dangerous passage through the desert in hopes of being re-united with family members who work in the States. So this author has a message, and an important one, and there is nothing wrong with selling a message to readers per se, but Luiselli is trying way to hard, thus over-constructing her text by throwing in all kinds of ideas as well as narrative strands and sometimes forcing connections that simply make no sense.

The main storyline is about a patchwork family in the process of falling apart: Each parent brought one child into the marriage - a boy and a girl - and the grown-ups used to work together on a soundscape project, trying to record the languages spoken in NYC. Now the husband (they remain unnamed) wants to do a project about the removal of the Apaches, so the family makes a road trip to former Apacheria. The wife wants to do a project about the children who get lost in the desert and is also trying to help a woman to find her two kids who disappeared while trying to cross the border. Oh yes, and the boy and the girl are afraid they will lose each other when their parents separate.

This is symbolism overload, and the composition is based on comparing apples to oranges. In their respective projects, the husband and the wife aim to record the "echoes" of the lost children and of the Apaches. I do not know how many books Tommy Orange, Joshua Whitehead, Terese Marie Mailhot et al. have to write until people stop pushing the destructive narrative of the "vanishing Indian" - Native Americans are still there, but they only appear as a vanished people in this story, firmly stuck in the past, a narrative device without a voice, defined by an alleged absence. The fact that one of the children has a Mexican Indian great-grandmother (this info is buried deep in the text) just feels like another idea that adds to the over-construction of the story.

The children who cross the border also don't get to speak in this text, they are represented through stories: In the news, in books, in the imagination. Once they are looked at, but to what end? The point here is to document and record their absence - that's the idea the author had, and it remains an idea in the text as well. And does it make sense to compare the Native American genocide to migrant children trying to cross the border to siblings being torn apart by divorce, because people get "lost"? I think it's a mess.

What makes it even harder to read is that the characters are difficult to accept: The children sometimes don't sound ike children, and it remains abstract why the parents want to separate. Often, they read like caricatures of leftist intellectuals (this novel has literary cross-references abound), which makes the reader feel sorry for the children. Oh yeah, and the book is too long.

I wish I could have loved this, because migration is such an important topic, and the racism of the current US administration needs to be fought, but this book does not have the heart and the power it would have needed to succeed.

Too many words and not enough story. Similar comments appeared on my English Language report when as an earnest 16 year old I would pore over the thesaurus, gleaning longer and more obscure words to weave into my prose. Unfortunately for me the examiners were looking for an easy read which demonstrated a basic grasp of grammar.

As a reader I want a book that gets my attention, tells me a story or provides some descriptive thread, and either educates, thrills or tugs on emotions. In the case of the 'Lost Children Archive' I was interested in the original set up; the family and how they came to be, the lost children in the southern states and to a certain extent, the collapse of the marriage. But then it went on, and on, and I did not know where it was going. Not naming the characters is an unusual device, and maybe rightly so, as sometimes it was confusing but generally it prevented me from feeling any type of empathy for the characters. There were pages of deviations which did not add to the story or my understanding of the situation. Then I started skipping paragraphs, and one thing leads to another. So sorry, I gave up - it was not the book for me.

This is a self-consciously literary novel which plays meta games with intertexts from a range of literary sources, from the Odyssey to The Waste Land. At its heart is a meditation on travelling and belonging, on migration and being lost. With an angry heart Luiselli tells stories of migrant children making terrible journeys from South to North America, perishing en route or being deported back. But all this good stuff is wrapped up in a narrative of a family trip that dulls down the potency of this the message. With unnamed narrators and characters (' The boy', ' The girl') and a fragmented, disorganised narrative, it's hard to feel engaged in the family crisis and breakdown, however much of a spotlight it gives to the larger story beyond the family. In parts powerful, in others too unfocused, this is uneven and faltering:3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because there's real heart here and a positive anger.

I am a bit conflicted about this one. On the one hand it is book that tackles an issue that is at the heart of a lot of social debate right now: immigration. The writer really manages to bring home some truths about the inhumanity of our approach to those who yearn for a better life, especially if those who are too young to comprehend the full scope of what is happening to them. Luiselli writes beautifully, but herein also lies the problem. Her writing sometimes becomes a little too convoluted, too crafted and the book looses "the story" and turns into a long self-introspective flow of the main character, with whom I found it very hard to sympathize. Maybe this is because all the characters feel like nameless puppets. Even though I can see why she chose to do so, it makes it more difficult for the reader to connect. I finished it but it took me a while, so read this when you have time because you need to have time to think about it to really enjoy it.