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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58652.Lost_Girls?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Lost Girls" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1170520515m/58652.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58652.Lost_Girls?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Lost Girls</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3961.Alan_Moore">Alan Moore</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5290741?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 4 of 5 stars<br/>wow. um, just...wow. i don't really know what i was expecting with this book when i first got it. i knew that it was by alan moore, the genius behind the comics/graphic novels <i>watchmen</i>, <i>v for vendetta</i>, <i>from hell</i>, <i>the league of extraordinary gentleman</i>, and many others, and i knew that it was a deconstruction of a genre like most of moore's work. in this case however, put bluntly as moore has in interviews requested it be done, that genre is "pornography," and <i>lost girls</i> is moore's attempt to "take it back," and to all kinds of intellectual places that aren't normally associated with works of that type. i guess i just wasn't expecting something quite so.....explicit? distressing? layered? to be honest, flipping through it put me off of reading it for a long time. <br/> <br/>when, recently, i read an interview in <i>rue morgue magazine</i> (a publication devoted to "horror in culture and entertainment") with moore, in which he discussed his intentions with the book, i decided to give it another shot. <br/> <br/>moore says that he really views the work as having very horrific undertones (which it does) and that in a way, it (and its subject matter) is based on fear, fear of "strange creatures alternately wonderful and scary," and the "worst and most ridiculous fears" one gender might hold toward the other. <br/> <br/>so, what on the surface appears to be "smutty parodies" (what moore says he specifically didn't want to do), really turns out to be the stories of peter pan, alice in wonderland, and the wizard of oz (or rather, of their primary female protagonists) retold in an enlightening, frightening, disgusting, disturbing, and deeply metaphoric and layered manner. the parallels running through each of the stories, through humankind's story of maturation, through everyone's personal stories of maturaion, as well as through the era the stories are re-told in (all of it surrounds the opening shots of world war 1) are fascinating and rewarding. moore succeeds in making this book highly literary, intelligent, and challenging. <br/> <br/>the biggest issue to take with it, of course, is how graphic it is, (i could make a "graphic novel" joke here, but instead, i'll let it pass as best i can), which definitely makes the book not for everyone, and arguably not for most. but, when asked if the story could have been done in a "kinder, gentler" manner, moore's response, a perfect one to end on (as the interview in <i>rue morgue</i> did), is thus: <br/> <br/>"life can't be compartmentalized into genres. it's messy, it can't be separated, it's all going on at once. if we are well-balanced, then horror, sexuality, comedy, heroism and villainy - we are all these things at once, and that's what makes us human." <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/312795?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>