The Lost Bookshop

For the first 100 pages I felt I’d made a mistake in choosing this novel. It seemed like it a Young Adult romance. But then it takes some sharp turns and goes into unexpected places. This was better than I expected.

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I arrived back at my B&B to find Nora watching a quiz show on the telly in the front room. She sat on an armchair with wooden armrests, her ashtray balancing precariously on one while a Jack Russell snored peacefully on her lap. I looked around for the other two, then realised they were sniffing my shoes. They could probably smell where I’d been and how much of an idiot I was.

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Told along two timelines, we follow a woman living in early 1900s who is determined to live her life with total self-determination, and another woman living in contemporary times who's on a path of self-discovery. The love of books and surrounding oneself with books is a major theme.

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There was no way of avoiding the shock and the pain of the cold. Perhaps it was better to get the hard part over with quickly and reach the exhilaration of having mastered your own senses and the environment. That was why we were all doing this, I thought. To prove something to ourselves. That we could do something so physically uncomfortable in order to feel our own sense of power. Or something.

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There is too much romance in this for my tastes, but perhaps it’s necessary to balance the difficult bits. The story is set, mostly, in Dublin and touches on what was a national tragedy in Ireland.

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I looked out the window at the rolling countryside. It was a dazzlingly bright day and every colour seemed to leap forth. I overheard someone say that Ireland would be a beautiful country if they could just put a roof on it.

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There are bits of magic here and there, random acts of kindness from strangers, and an interesting inclusion of tattoos. The writing is easy and witty and the characters are well-drawn.

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