67 pages • 2 hours read
Meg ShafferThe Lost Story: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: References to The Chronicles of Narnia
The novel contains several references to C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia series, in which the Pevensie siblings and other children enter a portal to the magical kingdom of Narnia. Like Narnia, Shanandoah is an alternate universe that is accessed through hidden doorways in the real world, such as a hollow in a tree or the inside of a grandfather clock. Just like the Pevensie siblings are two brothers and two sisters, the found family at the heart of Shanandoah consists of two women and two men. Early in the novel, Emilie notes that Skya owned the entire Narnia series, except for The Silver Chair (1953). When Emilie and Skya reunite, Skya promises to read her the story of The Silver Chair.
Significantly, the plot of Lewis’s novel involves two school friends who enter Narnia and are assigned the task of finding a lost prince. The Lost Story contains similarities to this plot, as Jeremy and Emilie help lost prince Rafe find himself. Other references to Narnia include the Painted Sea, where Skya wants to hide Emilie. The Painted Sea is inspired by the Silver Sea at the end of the world in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952). Furthermore, Jeremy chooses to read English at Magdalen College in Oxford, where Lewis was a Fellow, as a private joke between him, Lewis, and the universe. Lewis created a fictional world, but Jeremy actually stumbled into a real-life Narnia.
Shaffer uses the references to the Narnia series to pay homage to Lewis and also to examine the question of what happens to a person after they return from a world like Narnia. While The Chronicles of Narnia chiefly focuses on the adventures and quests in the magical land, Shaffer explores life after the adventure is completed and mundane reality takes over again. Shaffer also further develops a prominent motif in the Narnia series: A child escaping into magic from the boredom or harshness of the real world. In The Magician’s Nephew, Digory becomes one of the first human children to enter Narnia while escaping his callous uncle. In The Lost Story, Shanandoah is created when Skya runs away from her kidnapper, while Jeremy and Rafe land in the kingdom as a response to Bill’s abuse.
While the redeeming power of magic is analogous to Christian values in Lewis’s stories, in Shaffer’s world it is an allegory for the power of love, friendship, and art. The Lost Story also differs from Lewis’s world in that it has romantic and sexual love as a prominent theme.
Geographical Context: The Landscape of West Virginia
Set primarily in the forests of West Virginia, the novel uses the Appalachian landscape to build its atmosphere and themes. Shaffer braids together real geography and magical settings to indicate that natural reality itself provides a magical sanctuary.
The Red Crow Forest, which acts as a portal to Shanandoah, is fictional but is inspired by West Virginian parks, such as Blackwater Falls. Many of the fictional place names are based on real locations. For instance, the Blackwater River of Ghost Town is named after the falls in the state park. Rafe’s hometown, Morgantown, is an actual city in West Virginia. By locating the story in such specific real-world settings, the novel shows how magic can be found anywhere. Early on in the novel, a character wonders why fairy tales should be limited to the forests of Europe; in all their majesty and enchantment, the dense, green woods of West Virginia deserve their own fantasy as well.
Thus, Shaffer uses elements of the landscape to build a unique North American and West Virginian mythos. To this end, she also incorporates elements from American folklore and cultural traditions. For instance, Shanandoah is inspired by Shannon but also the name Shenandoah, which is from the Indigenous North American Algonquin language. Red Crow is a nod to a famous Kainai warrior, after whom a state park in Montana is named.
Shaffer also uses local and urban myths to ground her story in West Virginia. The beautiful, enormous firemoths of Shanandoah are inspired by the Mothman, a humanoid moth said to have been repeatedly sighted in West Virginia since the 1960s. The fact that Shanandoah contains both firemoths and Valkyries shows how the subconscious consumes different stories to create something new. Since Shanandoah is based on Skya’s imagination, her various story influences transform into a hybrid, rich land.
