When a Bookshop Closes

Two years ago I walked into my once favourite bookshop and asked the assistant, who’d I’d come to regard as a friend, for a book recommendation. She suggested The Twin by the Dutch author Gerbrand Bakker.  Given that I respected her opinion on books I bought the novel.

            My friend’s suggestion proved to be spot on. I loved reading, The Twin. It is Gerbrand Bakker’s second novel and 2010 winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.  To quote J.M. Coetzee it’s “A novel of restrained tenderness and laconic humour.’

            Over the years my once favourite bookshop had given me countless recommendations; countless wonderful books to read. But now my bookshop is no more. It closed last month.  More bookshops are closing. Where do readers go for book recommendations? How do I find the next great novel to read?  Blogs and Facebook are terrific sources, but they don’t know my tastes. My bookshop assistant friend did.  The death of a bookshop is cause for concern and sadness for all readers and writers. The cultural fabric of society frays. Shops not only sell, but they are places where people meet, chat, swap ideas, more especially in a special interest shop.  I certainly miss my bookshop. All within had become like family.With bookshops closing fast here in Australia, we're losing contact with people who love, what we love.

            Has anyone elses favourite bookshop disappeared? If so, how had this affected you, if at all?  And where do you go for book recommendations?

           

Creepy and Maud - A Rewarding Read

Today will be a plain day.  I’m well acquainted with plain days.  They move  uneventfully along the conveyor belt of life.  In fact, they’re the days which kept the conveyor belt cogs oiled: washing clothes, cleaning the house, grocery shopping, paying bills, phone calls, filing away bank statements… but then it was while I was scrubbing our crusted up ole oven, thinking there has to be a reward for getting myself through another plain day. And there is!  And the end of this day, my plain monochromatic day is a book for me to finish reading,  Creepy and Maud by West Australian author Dianne Touchell. Fremantle Press. There is nothing plain about this book. Far from!  Promoted as being for Young Adults, I loved reading it despite the fact that the last time I looked in the mirror I was definitely middle-aged.  Creepy and Maud is a heart breaking yet uplifting book for all ages.   The prose is sensitive, poetic and humorous by turns. It’s worth going through a plain day when you’ve got a rather special reward waiting for you at the end of it – Creepy and Maud.

Crime Pays - Read all about it!

Crime Pays – Read all about it!

It pays to read crime novels.  The dividends are huge, not only in terms of entertainment but also for their strong social commentary.

Allow me to name a few that were on last year’s long/short list for the Crime Writers Association Golden Dagger award.  I’ve read them and can say hand to my heart, ‘It’d be criminal not to read at least one, if not all, of the following,’

A Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash

The Rage by Gene Kerrigan (eventual winner of the Gold Dagger Award)

Bereft by Chris Womersley   (Chris Womersley is a Melbourne based journalist. Bereft, his second novel, has met with massive critical and popular acclaim here and overseas.

These novels are not full of dismembered bodies which have either been stored in vats of lime or grounded into mince meat by some Mafioso deviant to make spag bog with at a later date. These novels deal with crime but are imbued with more; they speak of the social and political times in which they are set.

 Aside from this list I cannot resist adding Peter Temple’s crime novel Truth - the first crime novel ever to win the Miles Franklin in 2010.  Yay!

But it comes with a Health Warning: if you’ve got a dickey heart, avoid reading. 

The Miles Franklin judges described Truth as "a stunning novel about contemporary Australian life, written with all the ambiguity and moral sophistication of the most memorable literature".

If there’s a crime novel you’d like to recommend, please do.

"Many a Mistake has been made in the Name of Loneliness."

“Many a Mistake has been made in the Name of Loneliness.”

Never a truer word spoken and more so in Fiction writing which is densely populated with the lonely.  It’s a way of getting people to make mistakes and of moving the story forward while garnering the reader’s sympathy.  No one wants to read about an un-lonely person, well, not unless they’re a character in a crime novel and about to be murdered.

My number one all-time favourite and lonely fictional character, who epitomises the above quote, is the lonesome Quoyle, protagonist in the novel The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.  

One night, Quolye meets a woman, the ruinous Petal, in a bar. Thin moist hot. Winked at him.

Followed  by: 

As a hot mouth warms a cold spoon, Petal warmed Quoyle. He stumbled away from his rented trailer, his mess of dirty laundry and empty ravioli cans, to painful love, his heart scarred forever by tattoo needles pricking the name of Petal Bear.

                There was a month of fiery happiness. Then six kinked years of suffering.

Do you have a favourite fictional character whose life is blighted by loneliness?

"Friends are God's Way of apologising for our Family."

“Friends are God’s way of apologising for our Family.”

Whenever I read this quote I laugh. Whoever came up with it, nailed it perfectly, when it comes to family they can either bring out the best or the worse in us.  They can provide comfort yet can wound us deeply.

In literature, families figure hugely. Why? Because there’s often conflict within a family, and when you have conflict you have a story.

I’ve just finished reading The Burgess Boys by the American Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Elizabeth Strout.  This novel deals primarily with the relationship between two brothers, The Burgess Boys, who are   diametrically opposed in every conceivable way.  The Burgess Boys is a fine novel filled with conflict, as are Strout’s three other splendid novels – Amy and Isabelle, Abide with Me and Olive Kitteridge.   But the conflict is never overt, always understated, always there, and often infused with humour.  Elizabeth Strout captures conflict exquisitely and humanely, weaving fascinating stories filled with insights into what it means to belong to a family – for better, or worse.  

Sill,  thank goodness for friends!

 Do you have any favourite family “conflict” novels?  Love to hear about them.