As I list all the things that I want to do as we get back to a more normal life, visiting a bookstore is near the top of my list. I’ve been to a bookstore once since the pandemic started, and although I was there to make a quick pick-up of Christmas orders, I took a few minutes to look around while the store was quiet. There is nothing like meandering through the aisles, admiring the shiny new covers, picking up books to rifle through the pages and smell their particular aroma.
The pure enjoyment I find in bookstores came across in two new books that are publishing this spring. The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin (Harlequin, April 6) and The Bookshop of Second Chances by Jackie Fraser (Random House, May 4) are quite different in many ways, but they share some important characteristics.
Both novels feature women accidentally employed in local bookstores whose proprietors are somewhat difficult men who are not keen to hire either one of them. Thanks to women who stand up to them (a mother figure in The Last Bookshop and the protagonist in The Bookshop of Second Chances), both find themselves in jobs that hold no particular interest to them in the beginning but which increasingly take their attention. These shops both need some tender loving care in terms of arrangement, stock and displays, and both women succeed in those things, while also promoting the shops in specific and successful ways for their time periods. And finally, and best of all, each vividly portrays the atmosphere within the store and the great joy of reading and connecting with others through books.
In The Last Bookshop in London, young Grace Bennett moves to the city where she rents a room with a childhood friend of her late mother’s. Grace works in the bookshop nearby with elderly owner Mr. Evans and starts making improvements to the dusty and disorganized interior, partly because her interest in reading is sparked by a handsome young airman whose own extensive reading helps her see books and reading in a new ways and partly by her visits to famous bookshops in London’s Paternoster Row. Although this work is satisfying, Grace also is inspired to help in the war effort, and she becomes an ARP warden ushering people to safety in air raids. One night in a dark and damp shelter, she starts reading to the people there, beginning a tradition and creating new relationships with the appreciative listeners. This novel is in a long line of recent stories about World War II, but it is set apart by its intense descriptions of blackouts and air raids and the lovely descriptions of the enjoyment of reading.
In The Bookshop of Second Chances, forty-something Thea Mottram, devastated by the worst kind of betrayal in her marriage and a redundancy at work, discovers that she has inherited a Scottish "lodge" from her great uncle. Thinking that a change of scene will help her move on with her life, she goes north with a friend to check it out and see what do with the house and the library of rare and valuable books inside. When friend Xanthe leaves, Thea remains in the village on her own, getting to know her neighbors and starting a job in the second hand bookstore, where owner Edward Maltraver’s prickly nature doesn’t put her off at all but simply amuses her. She becomes fascinated with this type of business and suggests ways to make it more attractive to visitors and begins to promote it using her Instagram skills.
This novel might be considered a romance or women's fiction, but its depth of understanding of grief following major life catastrophes and then how well that is portrayed through the first person narration (really, a conversation), kind of defies categorization. It feels so authentic and Thea is such a believable and quirky character that the plot is really compelling.
Both women, through their work in the bookshops and their friendships made through books, find themselves and become confident women after their early hardships. I enjoyed these books about books and the stories of hope and community from reading, and it was a fun way to immerse myself in the bookshop experience until I can do so again!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for advance copies.
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