The narrative drive of What Was Lost is the mystery of a young girl's disappearance in 1984, but the book is really about the loneliness of modern life, as manifested around a big shopping complex and the housing estate it serves.

The focus switches between the girl's last few days - her fantasy of setting up a junior detective agency, her desire to solve crimes and right wrongs - and the lives of the people who work in the Green Oaks shopping centre in 2004. In particular we follow what happens to Kurt, the security guard who starts to see images of the missing girl on his cameras during the night shifts, and shop assistant Lisa, whose brother ran off after being accused of murdering the little girl. It's a kind of ghost story, and manages to be ultimately uplifting despite covering poignant and disturbing subjects.

What made the novel for me was the dry humour of a lot of the narrative, and the variety of voices you get to hear around Green Oaks - little random snatches of people's lives, most of them teetering on the edge, it seems, of sanity. Aren't we all when you get down to it? the book seems to suggest.

It's extremely readable and, because of the mystery element, a real page-turner. My only criticism, and it's a small one in the scheme of things, is that in general the voices are too similar. Some are wonderfully distinct - the staff motivator who talks to Lisa about promotion, the random male who's spoiling for a fight as he waits for his girlfriend to emerge from a clothes shop. But many of the characters (and there are a lot of characters in this novel) have the same dry, resigned tone, and a frankly surprising range of register given some of their backgrounds.

Despite this niggle, I'd thoroughly recommend the novel. It's well-written, moving, thought-provoking and entertaining. Nice to see the Tindal Street Press represented again on the Booker list, too.

This sounds right up my alley! Thanks for the recommendation, Kate.

I should add, I've looked at other reviews since and no one else has had a problem with the voices overlapping. So it may be just me!