Blurbs confuse me.
They can annoy me, especially when they take up so much space that the back of a book has no summary.
They can make me suspicious if they appear on the front cover and the back alike. It makes me wonder why the book needs all these recommendations: it feels a bit like an over-eager salesperson jumping at you.
Blurbs can leave me stumped. Some books have the blurbs continued on the inside, and they can take up several (several!) pages. Three, four, pages of nothing but raving quotes just seems a tad much to me. Is there such a thing as a magic number for blurbs?
And sometimes blurbs surprise me, with names of people I don’t know. I do tend to look these people up, after I finished the book and agree with what they said because I’ll reason that if we liked the same book, they might have published something themselves that I might like. Is that why blurbs exist? To sell us other books?
Blurbs confuse me.
books
Reading challenge 2024 – No.8
No. 8: A book with bad reviews
Find her / Tessa Bailey
This book was handed to me with the warning: “you’ll regret reading this because it’s time wasted that you’ll never get back”. Spoiler alert: these words were proven right.
I just also checked Goodreads where there are a lot of one-star ratings (2.5 average score), which makes this book a solid for the category.
Although starting off, it has to be said: this might not qualify as a book.
What this is, is a special edition publication to celebrate the Week van het Engelse boek, or English Book Week. Technically, that still makes this a book, of course. But, at 56 pages I struggle to define its category and I don’t want to go so far as to count the words, so I’m taking the lazy way out and say that this is either a novelette or novella.
(The binding has a total of 90 pages, but almost half of that is space for an introduction, and an excerpt from a soon to be available new title.)
56 pages to tell a story is not a lot, and so we jump right in.
The story is about Holly, who lives with older brother Wyatt. Wyatt and Holly both love the music of Citizen, a world-famous cool rock band. In case you’re wondering how famous and cool: they’re hanging-out-with-Mick-Jagger-and-Keith-Richards-level famous and cool. (This gets mentioned quite a bit, so weird.)
When the band comes to town, the siblings make sure to get tickets to see the show. They end up on the front row, and when the band enters the stage and Holly sees the lead singer, Johnny, for the first time, the sight of him (“a god”) practically sets her girl parts on fire. If you as a reader are caught off-guard by that, you’re not alone: Holly is very surprised about it too. It’s even worse for Johnny, who is on stage and spontaneously forgets his lyrics when he catches sight of Holly in the crowd. It’s lust at first sight for these two and it’s uncomfortable to be a witness to it all.
Johnny makes sure that Holly receives a backstage pass and when they meet there, he is instantly jealous of the other men in the entourage watching her. Thus, he takes her into his dressing room and locks the door so they can make out in private. I can’t remember where Holly’s brother was at this point but I can’t imagine him waiting patiently on the other side of the door. Especially because the two of them end up almost sexing up against said door.
This all happened by page 12 and I was snorting at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. The reasons I continued this instead of quitting there and then, was because of the reading challenge, and the fact that I figured: only 44 pages left to go, I can do this.
But it got worse because Johnny finds out that Holly is a virgin. That puts a stop to the proceedings, and Holly rushes out of the dressing room. Johnny quickly realizes she basically is the Holy Grail of women (gorgeous, willing, and untouched), so he rushes after her to prevent her from disappearing forever.
At this point I took a deep breath, told myself to stay strong, and powered through, ever hopeful of things improving. Improving, things did not.
The two of them decide to get to know each other a bit before getting physical again, and within an hour of meeting, Johnny has told her his deepest secrets, from the pressure of fame, to suffering from writer’s block. Not sure why, because Holly only asks Johnny everything any interviewer already would have asked him. She shows him her favourite place in the area, which is an open field with a tree in it. I guess it meant to indicate Holly’s unpretentiousness and wholesomeness.
An hour is all these two need to know they are destined to be together, and they can’t imagine ever being without the other person again. So, they’re giving sexytimes another go. And there’s a lot of it: a disproportionate number of letters in this story is dedicated to sex or the mentioning of body parts.
When they’re not touching or breathing hard, Johnny reminisces about a ranch in Wyoming where the band once shot a music video, that he wants to move to with Holly, because he knows she’ll like it, and it’ll be a wonderful place to grow old together.
Holly’s down-there must be magic because spending the night with her is not only the best physical experience of Johnny’s life, but it also solves his writer’s block as a bonus. In return for all that, he promises to take her along for the remainder of the tour. (Well, demands it: he “needs to keep her”, yikes.)
When he finds her missing in the morning, he figures something terrible must have happened, because there is no way she would have just walked away from him. Johnny does not have any self-esteem issues (he really doesn’t: he sings his own song during sex to relax Holly). So, he drums up the security team, the band manager, and anybody else who’ll want to listen, to yell at them that his girlfriend is missing and they need to start a search party asap. When one of the security guys admits he thought Holly was just one of the many groupies that had tried (and it’s implied: succeeded) to get into Johnny’s room, Johnny punches the man on the nose, pushes him aside, and rushes off to find the woman with the magic vajayjay. Problem here is threefold: he doesn’t know where she lives, what her phone number is, and he’s only wearing sweatpants. Well, that last one would be a problem for anybody, but not for Johnny, who rushes out of the hotel barefooted and bare chested.
The paparazzi waiting outside the hotel have a field day, but he uses them to his advantage, speaking directly into the cameras about his lost girlfriend that he’s trying to track down and can she please stay put until he finds her, because he will find her.
Of course, Holly sees this, and when she hears he’s roaming the street still barefooted and bare chested, she rushes outside and forgives him. They proclaim their love for one another and he carries her off into the sunset. For reals. Fortunately, this is immediately followed by the words The End.
It was all so over the top and strange, and seemed more fan-fiction than romance novel.
I rolled my eyes at it all until I had a headache. I snorted and laughed out loud.
I’m guessing the size of this story was the main cause of the problems, but to be honest, if the story had been longer, I’m not sure the characters would have been able to carry it much better. Holly is a bland good girl: a virgin orphan who works as a waitress but hopes to become a social worker. Also, she seemed incredibly young. Johnny is…borderline red-flag problematic. The way he talks I’m guessing is meant to sound macho and cool, but is rough and dominant, especially compared to Holly’s innocence. He plans their future without asking Holly’s input, claims her as his girlfriend after one night, and is possessive and aggressive.
Technically the story contains a beginning, middle, and ending. There’s even a conflict / misunderstanding and a big gesture, as there usually are in a romance novel. But compressed to a story this size, it leaves out the character building and growth, along with the emotions. What’s left are two horny cardboard figures that we’re to believe end up living happily ever after.
I hadn’t read anything by this author before, but I’ve seen other titles in bookshops and from some surfing on the waves of the interweb I learned that she is pretty popular and people love her work. Therefore, I’m guessing the full-sized books are better, but after this experience I won’t be keen to try that theory any time soon.
Book review: Really good, actually / Monica Heisey
Barely two years after she got married, Maggie finds herself separated.
Her husband moved out, took the cat with him, and they promised each other to remain civil.
Of course, that’s easier said than done.
Maggie soon spirals out of control without realizing it. As she lists to her friends all the things she does to prove she’s not sad, one of the friends points out that the things she does are textbook behaviour for someone suffering from depression. To which Maggie replies that she’s been feeling really good, actually.
Careful suggestions about seeing a therapist (from her friends, family, co-workers, and random strangers) are cast aside, and instead she continues taking selfies to document her emotional journey, and posting on social media about Men.
Toronto is an expensive city, and Maggie can’t really afford life there on her own. Instead of facing this reality, she ignores it for months. She complains about it to her friends and co-workers, and goes on rants that involve conspiracy theories about the economy, generational injustice, therapy, and the concept of marriage. The only reason she doesn’t end up homeless, is that her mentor feels sorry for her and offers her a basement flat to rent.
Maggie wallows in her misery, and her behaviour starts to alienate her exasperated friends. She cannot be happy for anybody else, and her downer mood is annoying to all. Gentle hints about this, don’t land, or are purposely ignored. Being on social media all the time, does not help her in any way. On the contrary, of course: it only leaves her self-esteem down the drain. She uses their cat’s Instagram to stalk her ex online. She goes from shunning the idea of ever dating again, to having accounts on “all the apps” and going exclusively on first dates, because life’s too short to waste it on bad second or third dates.
Because she’s so deep in denial, Maggie almost becomes an unreliable narrator. Almost, because there are moments of painful truth, in the form of chapters on google searches, that literally just list her search terms, and thereby reveal much more about her than she cares to admit. The same applies to chapters on email exchanges with her ex, and her divorce attorney. The fantasy chapters are really funny as well, and the one that features Harry Styles made me laugh out loud.
Maggie spends a year grieving the end of her life as she knew it. Being a Millennial she does this in a way that involves a lot of social media, and at times I wanted to scream at her to just Put.The.Phone.Down.
All in all, this book does well in describing what we go through when we hit a brick wall at full speed: how difficult it can be to readjust your focus, and find a way to move on.
Maggie’s story is sad, frustrating, and funny. It was a fun and breezy read, but not something that will stay with me for a long time.
Book review: The girl behind the wall / Mandy Robotham
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.
Reading challenge 2024 – No. 2
No. 2: A memoir
Strong female character / Fern Brady
As a teenager Fern read about autism and it made her realize that she had a lot in common with the description. When she told her doctor, he laughed it off, told her she “just” had OCD and depression instead, and prescribed her medication.
Twenty years, several misdiagnoses and a lot of unnecessary suffering later, she gets diagnosed with autism after all. I felt angry and frustrated on the author’s behalf.
Autism expresses differently in girls and women than it does in boys and men.
One of the incidents described in the book, is when the author expresses her suspicions about being autistic to the psychiatrist she’s seeing, he wrongfully concludes she’s not autistic because she’s making eye-contact and has always had boyfriends, rationalizing that an autistic person would be incapable of that. Fern knows he’s wrong, just as she knows the others were wrong, but because she’s not able to express herself and shuts down when a conversation goes different from what she’s prepared for, she keeps stuck in the loop of misdiagnoses. The inability to communicate what is happening or how she experiences a situation, left me feeling almost claustrophobic at times. Being forced to sit through the wrong diagnosis, spending time at a psychiatric hospital, or finding yourself in a stressful situation only because you didn’t know how to say no, or otherwise express your feelings about it, is nightmare inducing.
I learned about meltdowns and shut downs (not the same), and masking. I also recognized certain traits and for a second thought, maybe I’m a little bit of that as well. But then learned that we’re in fact “not all a little bit on the spectrum”, and that either you are, or you are not. And this is not just the author’s opinion. She’s done her research and there are footnotes with sources listed.
These footnotes, by the way, are the only thing I had a problem with. And not the notes themselves of course, but the layout: the symbols used to indicate the footnotes are light and tiny. Especially when the symbol follows a quotation mark, it’s easy to miss. Then I’d spot the footnote at the bottom of the page, and I’d wonder what it relates to, and had to scan the page back to find spot. It might sound petty, but as I said: the author has done her research and there are footnotes throughout the book, and missing the indications, kept pulling me out of the story. Thankfully the book is so well written, that I kept with it and picked up easily again.
This book is insightful, and I learned a lot. It’s also funny, and dark, and very real. I laughed, and I cried.
Something different than usual: instead of a cover shot, one of the back of the book. It was the summary on the back cover that pulled me into this book and I wanted to share that as well because it is a far better summation than I can ever provide you with:
Reading challenge 2024: No. 1
No. 1: A book based on a historic event
The Night Ship / Jess Kidd
I went from Dublin to Dublin in my reading, and now from magical to (slightly) magical. It’s all connected and we’ll see where it’ll end up. For this book, it’s Beacon Island.
There are two stories here: Mayken’s, which starts in 1628 when she boards the Batavia ship. And Gil’s, which starts in 1989, when he arrives on Beacon Island, a tiny island (you can cross it in twenty minutes on foot) off the west coast of Australia.
Mayken and Gil both lost their mothers due to unconventional / problematic lifestyles.
Mayken and Gil live three hundred years apart, but their stories are mirrored: both live in/on confined spaces, are free spirits, cross dress, run into stories about monsters living in the water, and neither wants to be where they are.
Although it’s probably best known in Australia and the NL, the story of the Batavia has been told in documentaries and books, so I don’t consider it a spoiler when I say that its 1628 maiden voyage didn’t go entirely according to plan. Loaded with riches, and people, the ship was part of a fleet of East India Company ships travelling to what was then Batavia, and is now Indonesia. The sailors were literally sitting on top of chests full of silver coins, and with a skipper and upper-merchant that didn’t get along, tensions started rising all over the ship.
The Batavia’s story is in the book, but told from Mayken’s perspective, which is that of a nine-year old girl. She notices the unrest, the tension, but doesn’t know what it means. Her focus is more on catching the monster said to be living in the hull of the ship.
Gil is also living with tension and unrest caused by frayed relationships between the different families on the island. He also discovers he is causing tension and unrest, just by being different. Both stories build up to explosions of violence.
This book is a historical with gothic elements and hints of otherworldlyness. The build-up is nicely paced: it starts by calmly setting the scenes, the children exploring their new surroundings and getting settled in. Then, as story grows more urgent, the pace picks up, faster, faster.
The story goes from hopeful new starts, to awful realities. The story of the Batavia is clearly well researched, making Mayken’s story a treat. I liked Gil’s story as much though, and was intrigued about the boy who, appropriately, and not coincidentally, gets nicknamed Gilgamesh.
The story being told from the perspectives of children, gives it a slightly eerie sense, and I liked that most about it.
This book comes with plenty of blurbs: four on the front cover, and five on the back. More yet, on the inside. That can be annoying, but in this case, I have to agree with all of them: this book sweeps you off your feet.
Book review: The Lost Bookshop / Evie Woods
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.
‘Tis the season
Or: 2023 – Looking back on a year of reading
The days are dark and dreadful, literally and figuratively, and I’ve happily drawn the curtains to block it all out. Here, in my personal bubble of books, booze, music, and absolutely no news, I’m looking back on the year in reading that is now almost entirely behind me. This is, after all, the time of year where we look back and reflect. So, let the evaluation commence!
The Reading Challenge
- 17 of 25 boxes ended up being checked, which is a result even I didn’t see coming, as I only started the challenge in May. My willingness to drop everything in order to read, has finally paid off!
- The worst book I read for this list was definitely no. 13 – a banned book which had me in a spin for a bit. And then I didn’t finish it. It’s also with great pleasure that I can announce that this is hands down the worst book I ever attempted to read.
- The biggest disappointment in a book was no. 5 – a book with a person’s name in the title. I was so enticed by the teasers and the cover page, and then I just didn’t get it. It happens.
- The biggest stand-out ends up a triple tie between numbers 14 – a western, 20 – a book that prominently features an animal, and 6 – a book that was turned into a movie. The western was just a thrill-ride that sucked me in from the very first page, and the animal I read about, was a delightful octopus named Marcellus. Then there was scientist Elizabeth Zott, who figured if cooking on tv was the way to get her science across, then that was what she would do. Three very different books, but the common denominator was a kick-ass main character with an amazing voice.
- The biggest surprise about a book was no. 10 – a retelling of a classic just because I was fearing a dry and complicated mythical read, and then it turned out to be a delightful, almost Dickensian, tale of love conquering greed and envy.
- Books I learned the most from, are numbers 8 – a book with a one-word title, and 4 – a book with a city in the title. My entry-level knowledge of John Wilkes Booth was what I had learned through tv-show Timeless, but now I know enough to take a quiz on the guy. 1950’s Iran was something I knew equally little about, but reading a story set in that time and place, had me doing a deep-dive into the history books (and recipe books, because the way the cooking and the food was described, had my stomach growl).
- The book I laughed the most about, was easily no. 22 – a book with more than 500 pages. Fucking stuff up is part of life, no matter what age you are, and I really enjoyed the way it was described that Nell came to that realization.
Other reads:
Yes, I probably would have finished the reading challenge if I only had stuck to reading items that fitted the list. But, sometimes books that don’t fit a category, still had to be read: they were either borrowed from friends, I was the next reader on the library waiting list, or they just called out to me from their spot on the to-be-read pile. Then I also re-read some of my all-time favourites, just to get me going again when I got stuck in a reading rut or needed something to get me away from a book.
How to kill men and get away with it , Everyone in my family killed someone, and Factory girls were the stand-out reads in this category. I’m sure it’s entirely coincidental that these three books all have bright orange covers.
In numbers
- 31 – total number of books read that fell outside of the reading challenge category and/or were read before the reading challenge was started.
- 17 – total number of books read for the reading challenge
- 7 – books started but not finished because they were the wrong book at the wrong time
- 27 – books I borrowed from the library
- 5 – books I borrowed from friends
- 23 – books I bought
Overall conclusion
I borrowed books, bought books, and donated books.
I’ve talked about books, written about books, and took so many pictures of books-i-want-to-read that my phone’s memory is close to reaching full capacity.
I got to know amazing characters, and discovered new places.
2023 was one heck of a book year.
Book review : Factory Girls / Michelle Gallen
My tbr pile is so big, that I lost a book in there.
(Confession or brag: it’s a thin line. I guess it depends on who you ask. Just don’t ask my mom: she’ll only roll her eyes.)
What happened, was that I started to read this book last year, and when for some reason I had to put it down, I accidentally put it on the wrong stack and it ended up on the tbr pile, instead of the “I’m currently reading these”-pile. When I was looking for a book to read for my reading challenge, I stumbled on this book instead, was so happy to have found it again, that I forgot about the reading challenge for a hot minute, and dove into this instead.
I bought this book in Dublin last year as a souvenir, and it’s very Irish.
Factory Girls is set in Northern Ireland, 1994. It’s about Maeve Murray, who has two best friends, Aoife, and Caroline. They live in “a shitty wee border town” near Derry, and the girls have just finished school. They have all summer to wait for their exam results, and use the thirteen weeks to work at the local clothing factory, to save up money for university. Maeve dreams about studying journalism in London, where nobody will know her, and nobody will care about the fact that she’s Catholic and has a sister who died.
Because they can’t wait to leave home, Maeve and Caroline rent a small apartment above a shop, across from the factory. The factory workforce consists of Catholics and Protestants alike, and even inside the small factory community, there is a strong divide that has tensions rising at times. The peace talks that are happening, are only cause for more tension. Maeve is relieved to finally find one thing they have in common: both Catholics and Protestants sing the happy birthday song exactly the same.
Their boss is Andy, who is called Handy Andy by the workers. He’s a creep who unhooks the women’s bras as he walks his rounds on the factory floor, and regularly calls women into his office alone. Maeve becomes one of his victims, but when she finds out she’s comped an extra ten pounds in her weekly pay for it, she only cares that in thirteen weeks, that would add up to an extra hundred-and-thirty pounds.
It is Andy who gives her the book How to Make Friends and Influence People which she applies in the funniest and darkest ways.
Maeve is aware that survival in their corner of the world, depends on being able to stay out of the spotlight, to keep your head down, and not make any outspoken friends or enemies. Yet just as she is about to make a clean get-away, she breaks her own rules and gets herself into trouble.
The book is written in accent, and I don’t know about you, but I generally find reading accents difficult, it slows me down, and words or expressions can leave me stumped, or require reading out loud. But when accent writing is done right, it adds an extra layer to the characters and the setting. I thought this book was an excellent example; the accents are used to mark the difference between the standings in society, and I could just hear these girls talk. And Maeve talks the best talk. She’s rough around the edges, a sharp observer, and aware that her working-class, Catholic background, is not working in her favour. Maeve is also aware that her normalcy about living with terror all the time, is actually not normal. Not only has she witnessed, and experienced, the violence of the Troubles, but plenty of “normal” violence and sexual abuse too. As she says: life is tough on men, but it’s always tougher on women.
Despite its serious setting and the roughness, there are plenty of (dark) laughs to find in this book as well.
This book gives off Derry Girls vibes (if you haven’t seen it: this is a gem of a show that streams on Netflix in the NL, not sure about other areas) but it’s way more real than that and has a darker sense of humour.
I liked this book a whole lot and it is a perfect example of why books make excellent souvenirs.
Rant or review
Book review – The Little Bookshop On The Seine / Rebecca Raisin
Boy-oh-boy, do I have things to say about this book.
After all the happy-sigh reviews, and, I admit, the pretty covers for the different editions, I had such high hopes. Bookshops. Paris. Christmas. What could go wrong?
Unlikeable characters, that is. You can have the nicest settings but if the main characters aren’t appealing, it drags down the story. And not be a total grinch, but the minor characters didn’t win me over either as they never really seemed more than stereotypes.
Ye be warned: I’m in no mood to hold back so spoilers ahead.
The story goes as follows: Sarah is the owner of a bookshop in small-town America.
Her best friend runs the café/bakery across the road, which is used as the hangout spot for their friend group (I cannot remember the others). Sarah doesn’t really step beyond the two locations, but she does have a boyfriend about whom I learned two things: 1) he’s superhot and 2) he’s a freelance journalist and away ninety per cent of the time, chasing stories in Indonesia, Russia, and anywhere in between.
Rant: it wasn’t until I finished the book that I learned that the second book in the binding was actually the first book story-wise. Who does that?! Seriously, I wish non-stop papercuts to the person who came up with that.
I thought this was a standalone and so annoyed that I never even bothered to read that second-but-chronologically-first book (“The bookshop on the corner”). So yes, it’s entirely my own fault that I have no idea what on earth brought Sarah and her boyfriend together in the first place, but based on the book I read, they didn’t seem to have compatible lives or even that much in common, aside from the fact that they seemed equally hot for each other. I didn’t root for their happily ever after, and was too chagrined to continue with the prequel to figure them out.
Then there’s Sophie, who is the owner of a bookshop in Paris, and not just any bookshop in Paris, but the one from the title. She’s heartbroken because her ex-boyfriend has a new girlfriend who owns a shop on the same street as Sophie’s bookshop, and she has to see them together all the time. She’s so desperate to get away from it all, that she contacts her online friend Sarah, and proposes they swap shop, and fast. It seemed a tad extreme, especially the hurry with which this all had to happen, but this happened within the first chapter and I was still on board.
The women have a couple of video calls to figure stuff out and three days later, Sarah is on her way to Paris, while Sophie is jetting the opposite direction.
Sarah’s enthusiasm for a change of scenery isn’t shared by family and friends, who aren’t as supportive as one would think, and they all seem Very Worried about her ability to deal with stepping out of her comfort zone. It’s explained that Sarah went through a traumatic event when she was young and this is why she grew up to be a shy introvert who is afraid of anything new and just wants to spend her days reading.
Having people in your inner circle that keep reminding you that you are scared of things and don’t like to do much, is not helpful. Sarah deserved therapy, instead of this borderline gaslighting.
Once she has touched down in Paris, Sarah needs to take the metro into town and acts like she’s never been on a busy mode of public transportation. Even if she hadn’t before, she just travelled from one international airport to another, so she must at least have been on an airport shuttle or something? In any case, she needs two tries to get on board which has her completely stressed out.
It felt like such a cliché way to describe the fish-out-of-water situation and did not establish Sarah as the most capable person. But, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, and blamed jetlag.
When she finally makes it to the bookshop, she promptly has her luggage stolen there. Because no, you shouldn’t leave your luggage unattended anywhere, least of all not in a busy shop in a big city. As quickly as Sarah was annoyed with Paris, I was annoyed with her.
So many stereotypes are thrown around that it’s almost insulting: the French are arrogant and eat weird food. Nobody wants to help lost tourists. Of course, the shy guy sitting in the corner all day, every day, turns out to be Sarah’s favourite author. Of course, the haughty employee who steals money turns out to be a loving single mom, struggling to make ends meet. None of it was surprising or original.
Sarah is disappointed when none of the staff jumps up to become her new best friend right away. Sarah is disappointed about life in Paris because she had pictured herself reading in the parks, walking along the Seine and sipping wine in cafés. Sarah sure is great at moping around and doesn’t do much self-reflection: building a life in a new place, requires some actual input. And Sarah is not investing time in making friends or exploring the city because she’s too flustered about the bustling shop, and the disorganized mess it all is. The staff is giving her a hard time and her doormat personality has them walking over her schedules and plans.
When one of the shop girls finally feels sorry for Sarah and starts taking her out for lunches and shopping trips, she also provides her with some much-needed insider information, but basically tells Sarah to put on her big girl pants and get on with it.
Then on top of everything, Sophie, all the way over in the US, gets mad because the reports indicate sales numbers are dropping every month. While understandable, this anger seemed weird to me because she decided to leave a shy, timid, woman in charge, one who barely manages to keep her own little shop afloat. At the same time, Sarah is surprised to learn that Sophie managed to turn her shop around because yes, that’s what happens when you stop reading behind the register and actually run a business.
Sophie came across as a bit of a ball-buster and not particularly friendly, but I think that’s mostly caused by the story being told from Sarah’s opposite-personality perspective. These women had an online friendship and are quickly learning that they might not have known each other all that well after all.
Sarah’s big solution for the shop is bringing Christmas into it. Because when didn’t a string of pretty lights solve all problems?
Although everyone is dragging their feet, they do get into it and that is how she somehow saves the shop from nearly going under and all problems are wrapped up with pretty bows.
The problems felt petty to begin with, and the ending was too easy.
In between the bookshop drama, there is boyfriend drama for Sarah because while her superhot boyfriend had promised to stop by in Paris regularly, he doesn’t, and is instead continuing his Amazing Race-style chase around the globe, going from one news story to the next. His carbon footprint is not little.
(I kept forgetting his name, and can’t be bothered to look it up now. It’s something soap opera-y.)
Sarah feels abandoned but instead of telling him that, she pouts and passive aggressively ignores his calls and messages for a couple of days. Guess what: that actually gets his attention, and he travels to Paris right away to apologize and jump into bed with her.
A relationship involves talking, even if that is or gets uncomfortable. This relationship felt very immature and unbalanced and they didn’t come across as a couple at all.
Oh, and there’s a second storyline about love letters Sarah and her favourite author find hidden in the shop but that did not create the intrigue it seemed designed to do.
All in all, it felt like this book wanted to be more than it ended up being.
As mentioned, I only realized this book was a follow-up and maybe that’s why things felt off and unbalanced in some places. It might be better to digest for those who read and liked the first book, but as a stand-alone this one, for me, was a big disappointment.
Bookworm in the City 