Valeria Louiselli

The Avid Reader Show

Lost Children Archive documents a cross country trip that is goal oriented for both a husband and wife whose marriage is disintegrating. Accompanying them are their two nameless children, one of whom becomes our narrator for a bit.
As they travel, they document in many ways, their travel much as each of them have documented for much of their lives.
The archive that is carried with them and accumulated anew as they journey gives the reader insight into both relationships and I guess I could say current events that are both heartbreaking and ignored, filled with peril and terror.
I would like to say that there is a nicely wrapped ending which ties up the loose ends, but just as in life and in our difficult present, it is not as easy as that, and though we may feel somewhat adrift from time to time and even at its conclusion, we are informed, enlightened and guided to a new understanding of a tragedy that unfolds each day in a country that once stood for freedom, asylum and welcome