This story starts on August 13, 1961. And if your history isn’t sharp on what happened that day, the first page gives it away: Berlin wakes up to a wall rising on its border.
The border had been there drawn in chalk, but suddenly there was a construction going up.
The only people still allowed to cross the border, were military personnel, and foreign press:
everybody else is stuck where they are. This is problematic for Karin, a young woman from West Berlin, who was taken to hospital in East Berlin the night before. She wakes up with her appendix out, and a border up. Her twin sister Jutta, is on the other side, at home with the family. Their cousin Hugo is a radio reporter and he takes Jutta along with him to cover the development of the newly rising border blockade, while trying to find a passage still open. There is none. The best they can do, is find a member of the foreign press and ask them to bring a note to the hospital.
In the days and weeks that follow, the Wall only goes up higher, and the strips of no-mans-land are becoming more fortified. It quickly becomes clear that Karin is trapped behind the Wall. It becomes Jutta’s mission to get her out.

The story goes back and forth between East and West Berlin, Karin and Jutta.
The chapters are short, which keeps the pace going. It also does a great job in describing daily life in the city at the time, and the differences between the two parts.
When Jutta accidentally stumbles onto a hole in the Wall, she goes through it, and locates her sister. She figures that Karin will be eager to come home with her, but Karin is settled into life in East Berlin by then: it’s been almost two years and she’s got her own apartment, a job, friends, and a man she loves. A man she loves so much, that it’s impossible for her to run and go home. Jutta tries to convince her that life in the West will be better, but Karin needs time. So, the sisters settle into a routine with Jutta regularly traveling through the Wall, to meet her sister for an afternoon. The fact that they made it undetected once, even twice, is a miracle. To think that they will remain invisible and keep this up, is a naïve gamble.

The start of the story has a lot of action: the Wall goes up, the scene is set. But then it stagnates. While that helps to describe how life assumes a new normal even in such a situation, this part of the story felt disproportionately long compared to the beginning and end. Because it isn’t until page 340 that pressure starts to build, and for a book that has 393 pages (including an epilogue) that was a bit late.
The two sisters are equal on paper, but Jutta was front runner for main character for me. She’s the one that goes through the Wall, she’s the one that realizes there is a sense of urgency. Karin felt too meek, too passive, and while her indecisiveness was understanding, it also got annoying, probably because it took too long, and it didn’t seem like she understood that she couldn’t take forever to make up her mind. Not making a decision, is a decision itself, and it got to a point where I thought Jutta should just leave her be, and move on. I don’t think that’s what I was meant to feel.
In the end, reality catches up with the sisters, and in a very bad way. But just as things are speeding up again, the story suddenly ends with a cliff-hanger.
The reveal happens in the epilogue which takes place on 11 November 1989 with the fall of the Wall. Having started the story with the rise of the Wall, that is a nice way to bookend things. But it felt hasty, as if space had run out, and this was the only way to wrap things up. The ending also felt a bit too neat.

Overall conclusion: this is an okay read, but for me it was on the verge of “meh”. It’s solid because of the obvious research that was done to provide a good setting, but a story is more than its setting, as it needs good characters as well. The characters in this book could have used a bit more oomph.

I ended the year with a book that I’d bought in Dublin and I kicked off the year with a book that takes place in Dublin. It was by total accident, or maybe subconsciously I knew, but who has time to figure these things out? Onto the book!

The Lost Bookshop is a magical story about three different people: Opaline, Martha, and Henry. The magical part is quite literal so if you’re a bit more skeptical, then maybe this book isn’t for you. I do love a bit of magic every now and then, and thought this book did it very well with just enough of it.

In nineteen-twenty-one, Opaline is being told that she needs to marry. She doesn’t like the idea one bit, and defies her mother and bully of a brother by selling a few rare books from the family library to fund her escape to Paris. She soon realizes she needs a job, and stumbles into one at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop. Here she meets James Joyce, in the process of writing Ulysses, and Ernest Hemmingway, in the process of flirting. She also meets Armand again, a man she’d met on the ferry, who had prevented her suitcase being stolen.

In the now, there’s Martha, escaping an abusive relationship, and the Irish countryside, and starting over in Dublin. She finds a job as a housekeeper for an elderly lady, and the best thing about the job is that it comes with a small basement apartment. On the first morning there, she wakes up to the sound and view of pacing feet in front of her window. When she goes to yell out of the window, she discovers that the feet belong to Henry, an English scholar, looking to find a bookshop at number eleven. Except the only houses there are numbers ten and twelve. Just as the title puts it: the bookshop’s lost.

Martha has the ability to read a person, so she knows Henry is in love with another woman. She also experiences sentences popping up in her head without context, hears sounds in the basement apartment, and discovers tree branches growing into shelves on the wall, complete with books that pop up. She accepts these things as they come along, trusting her instincts and the good vibes of the place.
Henry has the focus on his research shifted when the funding of his project gets cancelled, and he travels home to England to rearrange things. Once there, he finds out that his father has been in rehab, and is really trying his best to stay sober this time. Having had an alcoholic father growing up, has however, left a dent in Henry. He’s not able to trust his father’s recovery, and is used to keeping his guard up.
Even though they don’t seem to have much, if anything, in common, Martha and Henry quickly connect and become friends. They bring out the best in each other, with Henry introducing Martha to learning and reading, and Martha teaching Henry to approach his research and problem solving, from new and different angles.
Slowly but surely, the two of them unravel the story of Opaline, and the different storylines start to come together.
Opaline, Martha, and Henry all experienced trauma and refuse to let it define them: they have painful pasts but know they can only move forward, and do so. They are able to re-open their hearts again, and love, and grow.

Aside from the magic-magic, the story contains plenty of book-magic. The characters appreciate books, and what they can bring a reader. It’s about the hidden stories inside a bookshop, the hunt for rare books, and a missing manuscript.
This book and I were a match made in book heaven, and I enjoyed every page of it.

Coincidence or magical interference? Last week I spotted an article in The Guardian about the Book of Kells and its new experience. Then a few hours after reading that article and texting friends about it, I was on the train, continuing my reading of The Lost Bookshop, and my mouth fell open when a scene happened where Henry takes Martha to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. The way she describes seeing it for the first time, the experience of being in the library’s Long Room, made me smile because I could so relate to that. And I couldn’t believe the happenstance of reading about it, after reading and texting about it earlier in the day. “No way!” was my out-loud reaction to it (startling the woman sitting next to me).
The universe works in mysterious ways I’m not smart enough to understand, but I do believe it is telling me I need to go to Dublin.