Lost Boys

The Lost Boys is a triumph in setting. The most frequent complaint I found about this book before reading it myself was how long it takes to get to the plot (the plot, per se, occurs on page 374 and runs for about 15 pages before the book ends.) People who say such things are missing Card's point. The Lost Boys is not about plot – it is about how the most mundane things can conspire to drive us down – how teachers can be too cynical to love children, how churchgoers can be so self-absorbed that they wrap God around themselves and how businesses can be so obsessed with the bottom line that they are torturing their employees. It is about how witty Step and kind DeAnne get disillusioned and how hard they have to work to pull themselves back up. And ultimately, Lost Boys is Card's testament to Mormonism – how faith in the unseen can be the most important thing of all.