The Last Bookshop in London

The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin  320 pages

Two young women, both eighteen years old, come to the big city of London from the English country side. Grace and Viv have aspirations of being shop assistant’s at Harrod’s. However, they need letters of recommendation, but only Viv has one. Grace had been living with her uncle’s family and running his store since the death of her mother. He was a mean man and refused to help his niece.

Upon their arrival in London, the girls had a place to stay---with Mrs. Weatherford and her son, Colin. Mrs. Weatherford had been her mother’s closest friend. The girls felt comfortable staying with her.

It’s August 1939. Hints of the impending war are being seen around London. Viv gets her position, leaving Grace to feel left behind. Mrs. Weatherford steps in and arranges for Grace to work at the Primrose Hill Bookshop. Browbeating the owner, Mr. Evans is more like it though. At first, Grace is extremely apprehensive about taking the position. She has never been a reader and knows nothing about books and literature.

When she arrives for her first day, she is dismayed by the clutter, the dust, and the lack of any kind of structural organization for the books. Grace knows how to organize and clean, so she gets to work.  It’s a daunting task, but she has no choice if she wants that recommendation letter.

Soon, Grace has made inroads to the mess. She even begins to offer help to the store’s customers. She meets one of the store’s regulars, George, an RAF pilot who loves the written word. George sees her distress and encourages her to read. She starts with “The Count of Monte Cristo.” As Grace falls into the story, she and George strike a small romance, sharing books and plotlines.

The Germans begin their attack on England with the London Blitz. Viv leaves Harrod’s to join the war effort with the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service – a branch of the British Army). Again Grace is left behind; With Colin recently drafted, she feels she cannot leave Mrs. Weatherford or Mr. Evans.

Grace, though does part and becomes an ARP (Air Raid Patrol) warden. With her partner, Mr. Stokes, she walks the blacked out streets, helping those who have been impacted by the nightly bombings. 

As the bombs fall, Grace, on her nights off, and Mrs. Weatherford are forced to join the rest on London’s citizens taking cover in the underground tube station. There she sees her neighbors and some of the bookshop’s customers. To make the nights less scary, Grace begins to read aloud. Soon, many of her tube-mates join the ever-growing circle around Grace’s voice. It is here, safe as possible from falling German bombs, that Grace begins to learn the power of books.

 Author Martin does  a wonderful job in pulling me in from the very first page. I also like how the Blitz is a character, doing what it needs to do so that Grace can stay connected.  I really enjoyed this novel, and The Last Bookshop in London receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. 

 

The Little Paris Bookshop

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George   392 pages

The Little Paris Bookshop is quite an unusual bookstore with an equally unusual proprietor. Monsieur Jean Perdu’s bookstore is floating barge along the Seine. Perdu considers himself a literary apothecary.. He can prescribe just the write book to meets the needs of the buyer.

However, there is one person Perdu cannot ease the symptoms of what ails him, no matter what book he selects. That person is himself. He is heartbroken. Twenty-one years ago, his true love, Manon, left him. She sent a letter which he has never opened because he is sure it contains usual lines: “it’s not you, it’s me;” “I’m not ready for the love you have to give;” yada, yada, yada.

But now things are changing in his apartment building. A new tenet has arrived with only the clothes in her back. The building manager asks all the residents for a donation. Perdu has been assigned a table.

Yes he has a table, but that means entering the lavender room he shared with Manon, which has been sealed shut for twenty-one years. Torn between his reluctance to enter the room and his desire to help his new neighbor, Catherine, he wills himself to enter and takes the table across the hall.

Catherine find Manon’s letter and returns it. Faced with its actual presence again, Perdue opens it. Manon’s words shock him to his core; what she says and requests is nothing, nothing, like he imagined.

Perdue decides to go looking for Manon to learn for himself if her words were true. He casts off the lines of his barge and begins the long trek south to Manon’s home. He is joined by his two cats, and at the last second, by another apartment-building neighbor, Max, who is looking to escape his sudden fame and complete writer’s block.

The story of the journey takes up roughly two-thirds of the book. I didn’t care for the slapstick antics that ensued. It didn’t help that an Italian chef, also looking for a long-lost love, joined the merry cast. The slapstick got in the way of the story for me, making the story seem somewhat unbelievable. I also felt lost with all the names of the villages that the characters traveled through, even though the author supplied one. All in all, I really like the first and last fourths of the story. The characters evoked empathy in these sections.

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, 260 pages

I really enjoyed this story. It starts out a little slow but really picks up after the first 30 pages. It really is a story that chronicles part of the life of A. J. Friky, a bookstore owner on Alice Island. It follows him for about twenty years and we really get to see who he is and how he changes through that time. When we meet him, he is a fairly recent widower, having lost his wife in a car accident. She had grown up on the island and brought him back to run the bookstore with her. After she died, he didn’t really feel like he fit in. Soon after the beginning of the story a series of events begin to happen to him; a valuable book is stolen from his home and a baby appears in the store. These two events conspire to change his life. I really liked how everything came together at the end and some loose ends were wrapped up. I’m sure some readers would say it was too pat, but I thought it was great. This was a good adult offering from this mostly YA author.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
260 Pages


If you are a book lover you'll like this book. A.J. Fikry is the owner of a small bookstore on an island in the northeast.  He is a curmudgeon, in mourning from the death of his wife, completely isolated from the community he serves.  A series of events draws him back into life and the book follows the next 20 years as he changes and becomes a family man, a successful bookseller and an integral part of the community.