Lost & Found:

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE WINNER OF A LAMBDA LITERARY AWARDFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTIONLONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDALNamed one of the best books of 2022 by NPR • Oprah Daily • People • Esquire • Vogue • Chicago Tribune • TIME • The New Yorker • The Washington Post • Vulture • Publishers Weekly"Loss, love and our place in the universe. . . . Those ideas form the backbone of Lost & Found. . . . A beautiful book." —Matt Galloway, CBC"Schulz's book torques the grief memoir into a Möbius strip, placing the totalizing experience of loss. . . . In an ocean of churning cynicism and despair, this is a winning bet." —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times"In this loving memoir, Schulz . . . explores the ways that losing and finding love intertwine to make a life. It's a tonic for anyone who's been consumed by grief—and then marveled in joy, which itself can feel like loss all over again when you experience it without the person you miss." —TIME"Lost & Found is as much a philosophical reckoning with the experiences of losing and finding as it is a record of Schulz's personal grief and love stories. . . . Beyond an affecting portrait of singular mourning, Schulz unravels universal truths about why loss guts us, and how it forces us to grapple with our place in the world and its workings." —NPR"Exquisite existential wanderings. . . . Schulz's canny observations are a treasure." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)"Eloquent and wise." —New York Times Book Review"Eloquent . . . refreshing. Schulz writes with tenderness and honesty. . . . Schulz's memoir suggests that, if we remain open to finding, the lost things might return to us, just not in their original forms. . . . The idea that love, intelligence and joy, poured into one's children, can result in resilience, self-knowledge and attentiveness feels deeply hopeful." —New York Times Book Review"A searchingly intelligent memoir and psychological meditation. . . . Schulz transforms this extraordinary coincidence of major life events—death and falling in love—into an extended, philosophically edged reflection on the meaning of losing and its opposite, finding. . . . Elegant and thought-provoking, Schulz's book is as much a celebration of the circle of life as it is an elegant reminder to all that 'we are here to keep watch, not to keep.'" —Kirkus Reviews"A probing, multifaceted exploration of two universal phenomena—grief and love—is both a revealing account of defining moments in Schulz's life and an eloquent map of the pathways connecting them to our shared human experience. . . . Schulz displays a capacious intelligence matched only by her boundless curiosity and insight. Lost & Found is a beautiful, life-affirming book that passionately embraces some of the deepest questions of human existence in the fullness of their sorrow and joy." —Bookpage (starred review)"Deeply felt. More than a reflection on the loss of a parent. It is about the idea of loss in general and the passage of time. Fresh and evocative . . . a poignant, loving, wise, and comforting meditation on grief from both a personal and collective perspective." —Booklist (starred review)"[Schulz] examines the role that discovery and loss play throughout everyone's lives, from the large scale (wars, displacement, pandemics) to the intimate (hunting around the house for a misplaced trinket)." —New York Times"A sensitive and timely meditation on loss and grief, is balanced by the celebration of love and joy in the second half. But rather than the spoonful-of-sugar structure that this division implies, the book is united—even in its darkest moments—as a lively exploration of some of the strongest emotions we humans have the luck to feel and a wondrous look at how they work in tandem. . . . A sure- and light-footed wander through these heavy topics, though, written with grace and comedy as well as rigor." —Vogue"Within two years, Schulz mourned her father's death and met the woman she would marry. Her emotional roller coaster inspired an exploration of simultaneously loving and grieving, full of stunning observations: 'Love, like grief, has the properties of a fluid,' she writes. 'It flows everywhere, fills any container, saturates everything.' She ruminates on things that can be lost or found and, most touchingly, celebrates the 'and'-ness inherent in joining two lives." —Washington Post"Schulz's mind flows beautifully on the page. . . . Schulz's prose is lucid and intentional, yet unexpected and compassionate. She doesn't race to make her point and that expansive pace is what makes this book such a pleasure. . . . Schulz finds a way to subvert the [memoir] genre, taking it to philosophical levels while maintaining a grounded intimacy. . . . For anyone for whom loss is deeply fraught, this book is a necessary gift." —The Boston Globe"This memoir by the Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker writer about finding and losing things in life is one that several staff members at Harvard Book Store, including Cass, are excited to pick up in the new year. . . . 'I love her writing because it's really personal and intimate . . . and she's also just one of the smartest writers that I have read,' Cass said. 'She's just incredibly erudite and can pull in lots of different kinds of text, so it's a really unusual and really beautiful memoir.'" —The Boston Globe "Sublime, compassionate. . . . More than any book in recent memory, Lost & Found evokes the process of falling in love with a lush expansiveness and alertness to detail, a perfect ballet of confession and philosophy. . . . [Schulz has] a generous, conversational voice; the effect is like an intoxicating Oxbridge tutorial. . . . Schulz grounds us, as all great writers must, in the world." —StarTribune"Charming and relatable. . . . Schulz collects profound insights into love, how relationships develop and grow, and the new things we continue to find in loved ones, even after they're gone. Is love discovered, uncovered, remembered? For Schultz, it can be all of the above. . . . Full of curiosity and a great deal of love and compassion that readers will relish." —Library Journal"Lyrical and deeply thoughtful. . . . 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. . . . This gorgeous memoir is heartbreaking and restorative all at once." —Los Angeles Review of Books"A canny writer with an enviably wide span of expertise and curiosity, Schulz builds on that early promise with this memoir-guidebook hybrid that explores how grief and loss can coexist with gratitude, as profound and startling an excavation of her own life as her reportage of fault lines in the Pacific Northwest." —Chicago Review of Books"A moving story about grief and love in equal measure. . . . Throughout the book, Schulz goes on tangents, weaving bits of trivia and ephemera in the charming manner of an avid reader and a New Yorker staff writer, which both Schulz and her wife are. But it's the wisdom of her reflections that really stay with me: 'how lovely life is, and how fragile and fleeting.'" —BuzzFeed"Moving. . . . An introspective read." —The Cut"Elegantly written . . . dazzling reflections on loss, discovery and the continuity of life." —Associated Press"Only a writer this talented could weave together the deeply personal along with larger cultural concepts in a memoir that reckons with the universal." —Los Angeles Times"In Kathryn Schulz's radiant memoir, mourning loss leads to brave new beginnings. . . . Outstanding." —Oprah Daily"A ray of light in a bleak era. . . . The meaning of losing a loved one and how one finds grace in the aftermath of loss is examined here via Schulz's attentive reporting and tender vulnerability. Writing about the impact of her father's death alongside finding the love of her life—and becoming a mother, Schulz here offers an antidote to grief and a profound reminder that darkness is nearly always followed by light." —Oprah Daily"Excellent. . . . Had it been published a few weeks ago, would have been among the best of 2021. . . . A guidebook to ourselves, albeit the way great writing always is—you step back to find you have new eyes and a heart swollen with possibilities. . . . It's overwhelming, beautiful stuff, though always full of living, just as effective on love and promise . . . read it as a kind of exhilaration, at such a rich world. It’s the right book for a cold January of quarantines and unease." —Chicago Tribune"Pulitzer Prize-winner Kathryn Schulz's grief memoir offers clarity and wisdom on how loss and discovery are never far apart from one another." —Esquire"The Pulitzer-Prize winning New Yorker staffer gets personal, writing about meeting her wife, losing her father, and more in this thoughtful, uplifting memoir." —Philadelphia Inquirer"Schulz explores the intricacies of the relationships that have helped make her into who she is—her father's upbringing, her wife's experience growing up a farmer's daughter, her own marriage—and uses them to build a captivating story about how we find our way in this glorious, complicated, maddening world." —Town & Country"Schulz sets her inquisitive memoir at the intersection of parental death and romantic love, as the passing of her beloved father coincided with meeting, just eighteen months earlier, the woman she would eventually marry. Yet this is not simply an autobiography or an elegy; as the book's title suggests, Schulz wondrously explores the myriad ways we process fortune and misfortune." —Electric Literature"Beautiful. . . . Serves as a lens through which readers can reflect on their own families." —Hey Alma"A brilliant and insightful journey deep into one Baltimore family's shortcomings. . . . Heartwarming and hilarious. . . . Trust us when we say you won't want to miss this one." —DailyHive"Kathryn Schulz has a singular way of turning a familiar idea around and around until it becomes cosmic, geological, wondrous. In Lost & Found, she moves between the philosophical and the intimate, turning a memoir of love and death into an exploration of the way chance becomes fate and grief intertwines with gratitude. To read her is to be quietly amazed at hidden depths and histories—as if you were to discover a map of a continent written in the palm of your hand." —Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror"This is an extraordinary gift of a book, a tender, searching meditation on love and loss and what it means to be human. Schulz has a remarkable ability to meld deep erudition and incisive critical enquiry with lyricism and hard-won personal wisdom. I felt so many different things reading it; I wept at it, laughed with it, was entirely fascinated by it. I emerged feeling a little as if the world around me had been made anew." —Helen MacDonald, author of H is for Hawk"This book is a deeply personal account of losing a father and finding a wife, but its curiosity is thrillingly omnivorous—it explores everything from meteorites and alphabets to mythic valleys of lost objects. Schulz's voice is somehow wry, tender, rigorous, awestruck and lucid all at once. She's never anything but the very best company, speaking nuanced truths from and about the deepest reaches of the heart." —Leslie Jamison, author of Make it Scream, Make it Burn"Our lives do indeed deserve and reward the kind of honest, gentle, brilliant scrutiny Kathryn Schulz brings to bear on her own life. The book is profound and beautiful." —Marilynne Robinson, author of Housekeeping and Gilead "An unfolding astonishment to read." —Alison Bechdel, author of The Secret to Superhuman Strength and Fun Home"Kathryn Schulz has created a masterpiece of metaphysical insight, at once richly lyrical and piercingly specific." —Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon and Far from the Tree"Lost & Found is the most daring of books: a memoir by a happy person. Deeply felt and exquisitely written, it's an absorbing exploration of love and loss—not to mention meteorites, Dante and bears. The prodigiously talented Kathryn Schulz has written about her life in a way that will change yours." —Andy Borowitz, of The Borowitz Report"I will stake my reputation on you being blown away by Lost & Found. It is brilliant and profound and charming, all at once." —Anne Lamott