Found in a Bookshop

by Stephanie Butland

To a book lover, a bookshop is not a place in the world, but a world in itself.

You know that books are safety and escape and wisdom and peace and the things that get you through.

George is quiet to begin with, because he cannot balance small talk with the overwhelming feeling of rightness that comes over him when Rosemary is there.

The two of them share an easy-going brightness of spirit, an ability to find good in everything.

‘Every moment has its pleasures and its hope.’

A bookshop needs to be used. It’s as simple as that.

Books will always wait for you.

But when your brain gets old you make mistakes. And bits of your body start to ache and go wrong and it’s hard not to feel that you’re not what you were.’

Readers know that, when their heart hurts with loss or absence, then a book that they have read before can lessen the ache.