Fiction. In THE LOST GIRL, James Morrison finds a compelling lens through the eyes of a young person trying to understand the world and her place in it. In stylized prose both elegant and spare, saturated with irony but fraught with tenderness, Morrison raises questions about modern life that become more pressing by the day. There’s intelligence, wit, suppleness and a fine cadence to the sentences, and the book is full of well-observed detail…. Novels often struggle to balance emotional development and cultural commentary-one tends to overwhelm the other–but Morrison blends these elements remarkably well –Porter Shreve.