NINETEENTH-CENTURY RABBI Simcha Bunim of Peshischa told one of his followers to transcribe a quotation from the Talmud — “The world was created for me” — onto a slip of paper to keep in his right pocket. Whenever he felt sad or distraught, the man could pull out the words to remind himself that his life was of boundless value. When he was feeling powerful or important, he should instead read the words in his left pocket — “I am nothing but dust and ashes” — which would point out the humbleness of his true state. By reading these reminders, suggested the rabbi, human beings can maintain balance in their daily lives. While there are times when people might need one particular message more than the other, fundamentally both truths are always in our pockets: we are everything and we are nothing, at the same moment.

In her new book Lost & Found, Pulitzer Prize–winning essayist Kathryn Schulz comes to an understanding similar to the rabbi’s: the experience of grief and sadness and the experience of love and joy always happen at the same time, even when we are not fully aware of how much they are connected. In her lyrical and deeply thoughtful memoir, Schulz recounts the emotional confluence of grieving for her father following his death and falling in love with a woman, whom she soon married.

Schulz’s title, Lost & Found, establishes the structure of the three-part memoir. In “Lost,” the book’s first section, the author expresses her resistance to euphemisms for dying such as “passing away.” Such metaphoric language, she feels, “turns away from death’s shocking bluntness” and instead “chooses the safe and familiar over the beautiful or evocative.” Despite her rejection of such evasive language, she finds herself turning to one particular phrase after her father dies: “I have lost my father.” The idea of losing a loved one rang true to Schulz. As she writes, these particular words “seemed plain, plaintive, and lonely, like grief itself.”

Schulz spends much of the “Lost” section exploring not the details of her father’s death or her own grieving, but the multiple meanings of the word “lost.” She first recounts its etymology, discovering that the word emerged from the Old English verb meaning “to perish.” For Shulz, “to lose” has “its taproot sunk in sorrow.” Over time, the word “lost” began to take on a wider variety of usages. We can lose our keys or lose a game. We can be lost in thought, or lost in a book. And we can lose our minds and lose our hearts.

As Schulz begins her intensely logical analysis of the word’s implications in various circumstances, the reader might be tempted to wonder if the author’s riff into these abstractions is simply its own kind of evasiveness — another way of looking away rather than reading the words in the pocket filled with grief. But Schulz’s intellectual meditation on the language of loss is not an effort to pivot away from pain. Instead, it is an effort to open grief up to a larger and deeper kind of engagement.

Schulz returns to her family’s story with a broadened perspective. Long after the family’s decision to stop treatment and begin hospice, Schulz comes to the awareness that part of her loss was that “everything that happened in my life from that point on would be something else my father would not see.” That is, the loss she felt most acutely was that she knew she and her father would no longer be able to share in an ongoing life together. He would not see whatever might be newly found.

Schulz experienced intense grief at the loss of her father, but “one thing above all others made it bearable,” she says: “[T]he year before he died, I fell in love.” So begins the early pages of the book’s second section, “Found,” which details how Schulz initially fell in love with C. and how their relationship grew. These scenes are full of sweet romance, starting with the story of how, shortly after their first meeting, her mind underwent a “life-altering reorganization” as she imagined their future together. Next, she gives her account of an evening stroll during an early date: “I can still remember the exact route we took,” writes Schulz, “and also the wending way we walked, now closer and now farther, the shifting amount of space between us suddenly uppermost in my mind.” She recounts the magic of making pancakes together in the middle of the night, and the morning’s reality of seeing her new partner settling down with a mug of coffee and a legal pad to start her work day. In its own way, this everyday scene was equally magical: “[T]here she was, going about her life in my home,” realizes Schulz, “going about her life in my life.”

Just as Schulz does in the previous section, in “Found” she considers the variety of meanings and usages of the word that makes up the section’s title. She analyzes the difference between finding that is recovery and finding that is discovery. “Recovery essentially reverses the impact of loss. It is a return to the status quo, a restoration of order to our world,” she explains. “Discovery, by contrast, changes our world. Instead of giving something back to us, it gives us something new.”

Unlike in the first section, however, in the book’s second part Schulz has a constant awareness of how grief is always waiting for her in her other pocket. “Lost” and “found” are opposing concepts, just as grieving and falling in love are, yet both change our perception of our place in the world: “What an astonishing thing it is to find someone. Loss may alter our sense of scale, reminding us that the world is overwhelmingly large while we are incredibly tiny,” writes Schulz. “But finding does the same; the only difference is that it makes us marvel rather than despair.”

The stunning final section of the memoir is a description of what lies for Schulz between grief and joy, between what is lost and what is found: the symbol of union the author uses in the middle of her title, “&.” She points out that until almost the 20th century, the end of the English alphabet was not the letter Z but the ampersand symbol. When schoolchildren recited the alphabet, it was the last symbol they pronounced. “And” is not an ending, writes Schulz; it is a word that leaves us hanging, waiting for what is yet to come.

Schulz finds a series of deeply touching ways to honor and celebrate both the conjunction and continuity that her entwined experiences of losing and finding love have shown her. Life, she realizes, is clearest in the forward-moving union that “and” promises: that moment when we’re alive with both grief and joy, both the knowledge that we are nothing and the awareness that the world is waiting for us. This gorgeous memoir is heartbreaking and restorative all at once.

A powerful and complex story, this was a really great read - I found it tough at times, and definitely struggled with how it related to some of my personal experiences, but ultimately, I was glad I had read it, and appreciated the beautiful storytelling!

This is a moving memoir about grief. Thanks so much for the review copy. I sure others will be moved, too.

Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz is a beautifully written memoir that explores the complexities of life, love, loss, and grief. Schulz takes the reader on a journey through her own personal experiences, as she falls in love with her future wife while simultaneously grieving the loss of her beloved father.

What sets this book apart is Schulz's ability to weave together multiple threads of thought into a cohesive and compelling narrative. She not only delves into her personal experiences, but also explores the broader themes of disappearance and discovery, loss and grief, and the importance of seeking in our lives. Schulz's writing is both intimate and universal, inviting readers to reflect on their own experiences while also connecting with the broader human experience.

The prose is poetic, with a cadence that is both soothing and contemplative. Schulz has a gift for describing complex emotions in a way that is relatable and poignant. The book is also peppered with moments of humor, adding a sense of lightness to the weighty subject matter.

Overall, Lost & Found is a deeply moving and thought-provoking book that will resonate with anyone who has experienced loss or sought meaning in their lives. Schulz's ability to blend personal reflection with broader philosophical musings makes this book a must-read for anyone who is interested in exploring the human experience. It is a testament to the power of love, resilience, and the human spirit.

Kathryn Schulz's Lost & Found sounded like the perfect read for me. Somehow, it just didn't land. The writing is beautiful, poignant, and interesting. However, I tried to read it 3 or 4 times (including the e-galley and an e-version from my library) and I didn't make it past the 75% point. During my second attempt, I connected with the first essay on the concept of loss and the author's experience of losing her father and finished it. But then, I couldn't seem to get through the second essay. I'm a bit disappointed, as I can see this book has received so many amazing reviews, but I think that I need to let this one go. I suspect that I'll return to it some years from now and love it and wonder why it didn't work for me way back when.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the opportunity to read an e-galley in exchange for a review.

The writing in this memoir is just absolutely breathtaking. The story is captivating, and you really feel all the emotions pouring out from the page.

A beautifully written book detailing the loss of the author's father. Deeply relatable only in a way that someone has been through this type of loss can understand. Through the grieving and healing, Schulz finds ways to honor her father. Through the loss, she is able to regain her footing to find an unexpected love. Schulz's writing is eloquent, moving, and thoughtful.

RATING: 3 STARS
2022; Penguin Random House (US & CAN)

I will be completely honest, I requested this book based on the cover. It just pulled me in with it's mystical vibes. Memoirs are always hit or miss with me, because it really depends on the writer/reader relationship. I mean that can be said for any genre, as you have to feel invested in the characters to keep reading. But with memoirs, it seems like more of a fragile relationship. If in a fiction I don't like the character or characters I can wish for their comeuppance and not have any regrets. Or you can say I hated "John" and not worry about "John's" feelings. In memoirs, it's real and personal. Which of course makes it harder to rate. This person's life was shitty and messed up, but really fun to read. Or, wow how boring, only good things happened to them. For me it comes down to writing style and the writer.

Lost & Found is divided up into two parts - one where Kathryn is losing her father, and the second part where she is finding her partner. I think the title beautifully sums up this book, and life in general. In some ways I could relate to Kathryn and found her writing easy to read. At other parts I just didn't get into a reader/writer friendship I do with most memoirs. It is a heavily hyped book with critics ad readers, so I think it's worth reading just so you can be in the conversation. For me it was a good read.

***I received a complimentary copy of this ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.***

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sharing this eBook. All opinions are my own.

Kathryn Schulz's memoir is both a personal story and a review of how grief and loss profoundly affect our lives. Beautifully written with personal anecdotes interspersed with true stories from history. Her book's framework is in three parts, and covers the death of her father, finding the love of her life, and how these two experiences were intertwined.

A poignant close look at loss and grief--a book that will resonate with all of us who face loss (which is everyone). I admire the delicacy of language here, and the level of vivid observation and the graceful sentences.

I first encountered Kathryn Schulz through her writing in The New Yorker. Reading Schulz's essay, When Things Go Missing, that was eventually expanded into this book, left me in tears, and in awe. This book expanded on the profundity of both loss and grief, and demonstrated the many ways it can be equal parts joyful and painful.

Everything I was expecting and more. Another book that speaks to the existential dread that comes with being honest with oneself about the unknowingness of everything.

One of my favorite parts was when she, speaking of her wife who is deeply involved in the Lutheran Christian faith, said that it didn’t matter so much that they arrived at different answers to the questions they asked about the universe, but that they were asking the same questions to begin with. I love that.

If you’re queer, if you’ve grieved the loss of someone you love, if you like stories of synchronicity and happenstance told by someone who doesn’t believe in G-d/gods, you will love this one.

Note: the author reads the audiobook, and it wasn’t my favorite narration, but I am glad I listened. Mixed feelings, so, still five stars in my book because the content was amazing.

This book is an absolutely gorgeous meditation on love and grief, with an emphasis on the "and." Schulz's prose is striking, and she mixes facts and emotions and poetry and history effortlessly. I read this during a time of personal grief and found it to be exactly what I needed.

Reading about death can be very depressing. Kathryn Schulz is a tremendous writer and I hope writing this memoir was somehow cathartic for her, but I didn't find it cathartic for me. I was very happy that Ms. Schulz found a wonderful woman and married her, but still an air of depression hangs over the book. I had the same problem with Amy Bloom's recent In Love about her husband's decline and death. Aristotle wrote that people attend tragic plays to achieve the release of strong and painful emotions about the dark side of life. So sorry to say, I experienced none of this from reading Lost and Found.

Lost and Found: A Memoir
Author, Kathryn Schultz
Pub date: 1.11.22

Thank you Random House and NetGalley for the e- arc of this beautiful memoir!

The Random House synopsis states that Lost and Found is an "uncommon book about common experiences" and I couldn't agree more. Kathryn Schultz manages to take everyday experiences and turn them into moving and emotional events that have significant meaning regarding the manner in which we move forward in life. Eighteen months before Schultz's beloved father dies, she meets her lifelong partner and wife. And through this unbelievably blissful and memorable time of their relationship, Schultz is struggling to deal with the harsh and emotional time during the last few months of her father's well- lived life. She so perfectly weaves these starkly different relationships together and the profound impact that each have made in her complicated life.

Lost and Found is intense and intelligent, sharp and tender. It is an emotional memoir that focuses on love, loss, and grief and what it means to live and ultimately experience the myriad of challenges and gifts that life has to offer. Schultz writes with such significance and feeling that anyone who has ever love, lost, and grieved should read her wise and comforting words.

"Grief confuses us by spinning us around to face backward, because memories are all we have left, but of course it isn't the past we mourn when someone dies; it's the future. That's when I realized while talking with my friend- that everything that happened in my life from that point on would be something else me father would not see."

"This is the fundamental paradox of loss: it never disappears."

"Love, like grief, has the properties of a fluid: it flows everywhere, fills any container, saturates everything."

"We live remarkable lives because life itself is remarkable, a fact that is impossible not to notice if only suffering leaves us alone long enough."

Couldn’t even finish this book. I felt like I was reading a college book. I love biographies and this was not at all what I expected. I’m sorry but to start a book with continued statistics that never seem end was exhausting. I rarely dnf a book. 😢

This was totally different than I anticipated. It felt like a memoir mixed with a manual on how to kind of work your way through grief. I really liked how the analysis of grief felt approachable to any reader, and how the author talked about the beauty that can and will come after suffering a loss. It felt raw and emotional, without seeming too drawn out or overdone.
I liked this a lot!

Thank you NetGalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

An excellent memoir with a beautiful narrative thread, woven through with little gems of insight and knowledge

3.5 found stars, rounded up

From the publisher: “In Lost & Found, Schulz weaves the stories of those relationships (her father and her wife) into a brilliant exploration of how all our lives are shaped by loss and discovery—from the maddening disappearance of everyday objects to the sweeping devastations of war, pandemic, and natural disaster; from finding new planets to falling in love… Schulz is also attentive to other, more universal kinds of conjunction: how private happiness can coexist with global catastrophe, how we get irritated with those we adore, how love and loss are themselves unavoidably inseparable. The resulting book is part memoir, part guidebook to living in a world that is simultaneously full of wonder and joy and wretchedness and suffering—a world that always demands both our gratitude and our grief.”

Schulz’s writing is lovely and poetic, saying much with perfect word choices. “It happened one September, just before the autumn equinox, that time of year when the axis of the world tilts definitively toward darkness.” “I remember feeling simultaneously heavy and empty, like a steel safe with nothing inside.” Though now 2 and almost ten years ago, I could relate to the grief at losing my parents. “Losing my father felt like advancing one notch in the march of generations – like taking, all at once, one very large step toward oblivion.” Just when I began to weary of Loss, the Found section began.

I listened to Schulz’s narration of how she and her wife Found each other. It was good, but not as relatable for me. It starts out as essay, then veers into meeting and a 19-day second date. While happy for them, I didn’t care enough about Kathryn and C. to relish this part of the memoir. (I also feel that using an initial instead of a name makes knowing someone less personal. I get it, you want to protect privacy, but try using a pseudonym.) Schulz writes about Plato and Dante and unrequited love. Not the most attention-grabbing for me.

A poetic history of the earth and temperatures and “frogs and toads and salamanders, butterflies and dragonflies and golden beetles, dwarf ungulates and dawn horses and miniature tapirs and scores of other prehistoric creatures” opens the final section. I learned something new. “Until the late nineteenth century, the final character of the English alphabet was not the letter Z but a word: “and.” Poetic writing and pondering happen in this section. “We know by then (adulthood) that the world is full of beauty and grandeur and also wretchedness and suffering; we know that people are kind and funny and brilliant and brave and also petty and irritating and horrifically cruel…We do not live, for the most part, in a world of either/or. We live with both at once, with many things at once – everything connected to its opposite, everything connected to everything.”

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is so smart, moving and inspiring! If you avoid memoirs because you dislike navel-gazing, this book is for you. Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for providing this lovely read!