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.

We know the power of a book. Let’s not forget the power of a letter. It’s doing the same thing as our beloved books, only in a more specific way. It is taking feelings, knowledge, requests and hopes, and transferring them to paper.

So Kelly asks, ‘What books would you recommend to someone who was – who felt as though they had lost their purpose?’ Loveday looks up at the ceiling, every part of her concentrating. She closes her eyes. Then she opens them and starts to move around the shelves, pulling out volumes so rapidly that it looks as though the bookshop is, in fact, pushing them into her hands. Despite all the ways that Kelly feels safe with Craig, there’s no feeling to match watching a bookshop at work. Loveday puts four books into Kelly’s hands. Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers, Dear Life by Alice Munro, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume, and The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. ‘See how you get on with those,’ Loveday says.

Loveday nods. ‘Thank you,’ she says, then, with an effort: ‘I think I’m starting to forget what books can be.’

A bookshop needs to be used. It’s as simple as that. The money keeps the doors open, but it’s the people, the conversations, that keep it alive.

Although he has much to be grateful for with his family and his work, the foundations of his life intact, the realisation comes to him, standing in the kitchen, that it is the small things that are missing. Without them, nothing is wrong. But everything is . . . flat. Without texture. A little bleaker than it should be.

Living through capital-H history can, it seems, be deeply uninteresting.

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 give books to other readers, telling them, this will make you laugh, or, read this, please, so we can talk about it. Here you are, readers say, I don’t know why but this made me think of you.

The List of my Desires by Grégoire Delacourt. A dressmaker in a small French town wins the lottery, but she’s not sure if she wants her life to change.

Readers can hold complex thoughts, contradictions and moral oppositions in their minds, quite comfortably. It’s one of the skills that we learn from words on a page.

So here is a contradiction for you: you can love books, and you can also decide not to finish a book. Yes you can. Books don’t judge you.

This is how books work. They take what’s in them, and add what’s in you, and the interface, more often than not, leads to picking up that book every chance you get. Sometimes the power is so great that you’re up all night; sometimes you have to (and yes, I do mean have to) cancel a coffee date so you can get to the end.

Reading should be a pleasure and a joy, an education and a promise, a release and an escape. The books you choose for yourself should never, ever feel like a punishment or a chore.

Books for a sleepless crime fan: The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. A recuperating police officer with a broken leg becomes fascinated by the idea of whether Richard III was so terrible after all. Dissolution by C. J. Sansom. The first of a detective series set in Tudor times. Crime, but not the sort that is going to keep you awake at night. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. A teacher exerts a lot of influence at a girls’ school between the wars. This is funny and chilling and I envy anyone who hasn’t read it yet. Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore. Hard to describe this one – it’s a sort of historical murder mystery/psychological thriller, and I loved it.

Tommy squeals over his books. Zoe takes a deep breath, pushes the world away, and starts to read to her amazing little boy, who does not need to be brave, but only to be himself.

I would say, imagine the reader, but you don’t need to imagine yourself; you know how this works, this astonishing-ordinary transaction. Words plus spaces on paper, plus light bouncing on to eyes, plus brain, equal a place that can feel more real than the real world.

Not only in what you imagine, but in what you feel. You are allowed to not-love the novel the rest of the world is raving about; you are allowed to cordially loathe your sister’s favourite author. Reading is not a test. Whether or not you love a book is not a matter for debate; and not something you can be persuaded into.

Whenever I read a book with Black people in it, the point of them always seems to be Black, or it’s a novel about slavery or oppression, and that’s important, it really is, but I would like to see myself represented in the pages of a book and for there to be joy, rather than ISSUES. Or I would like to read books that feel true and real but are not about Black people suffering. I want to be offered books the way you would offer a white woman books, assuming you don’t feel the need to reflect them.

She thinks of angry people in films, who push their car horns again and again and again as a way of expressing their fury. It had always seemed a bit theatrical to Kelly. Now she gets it. It’s not about alerting the world. It’s about making a noise that’s louder than your own pain.

Also: believe women. Especially the ones who are very obviously in pain.

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. Follows one woman through her, objectively, not very interesting life. But the sort of read you don’t forget. It’s ten years since I read this and I still think of it.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. An older novel but such a beautiful read, about the kind of women who get utterly overlooked by the world. If you haven’t read Barbara Pym before, beware – this novel was my gateway drug to everything she ever wrote. Which would give you a Lockdown Achievement . . .! Midnight Chicken by Ella Risbridger. Not a novel, but a cookery book – the recipes are great (I’ve made the Paris cookies and the fish finger sandwiches, and they are both delicious) but more than that, it’s a beautiful story of love, loss and healing, told through food. I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell. This is non-fiction, and it’s excellent. The sub-title is Seventeen Brushes With Death and, counter-intuitively, I think it’s perfect pandemic reading. (It doesn’t feature any pandemics.)

Here is what I know. Sometimes, a book will sing to you. Sing to your soul, your pain, your being. Sometimes a book will know you, inside out, and it’s as though the pages have some sort of magical quality and the words are appearing on them just a little bit quicker than you are reading, because they are so very connected to your own heart and your own story that that’s the most logical explanation for what’s happening. Sometimes a book that you once gave up on takes on a new quality when you re-read it; when you get past the part you were stuck on, when you have the brain space or heart room to experience the words for what they can be. All of these books can be your favourites.

Books don’t care how many favourites you have. Favourite books love being in the company of other favourite books. Choose. Don’t choose. Have one favourite, or a hundred. Reader, whatever you do, you are right. You must be. It says so, here, in a book.

And Loveday has one of those rare moments, where she knows exactly what to say, with her own words, not someone else’s, from a book. ‘She was what she was because you are what you are,’ Loveday says. And George looks at her and says, ‘Yes.’