Found in a Bookshop

by Stephanie Butland

I can’t sleep. So I read. Where are the books that will make me feel surrounded, befriended, rather than as though I am the only person awake in the whole dark world?

Being able to sit here and watch the wind move across the same water is part of what helps Rosemary to know that, for all of the ageing and the aching, they still belong in this, their precious world.

In a frightened state, familiarity can matter more than safety.

Archie had folded her into his world with grace and kindness, but those things came naturally to him. Loveday’s resources are buried deep and feel as though they could run out at any second. So her way of caring is the reading refuge.

‘We’re all getting fatter,’ Nathan says. ‘If that’s the worst thing that happens to us in a pandemic then it’s good with me.’

But the book bought from the Lost For Words bookshop feels different. Partly because it’s already been through another set of hands, which have softened its edges, made it relax because it has been understood once already. And partly because the bookshop’s years of experience in giving the right book to the right person means that you can be sure that the volume that ends up with you, is for you.

the Professor will never, as long as he lives, get used to this strange way of separating families from each other. Perhaps this is why so many people look so sad. And why so many others have such terrible lives.

‘We didn’t know,’ the Professor says, ‘that the happiness of having our children would never stop. Did we?’

George has noticed that since the visit to the hospital they don’t have the plain ones any more. He has always liked Rich Tea biscuits, but he can see that Rosemary needs to give him the best of everything between now and the end.

And so long as the pandemic has not robbed you of your ability to concentrate, to focus, or to give any portion of your mind to someone else’s story. If that is the case: I’m sorry. Don’t worry. Books will always wait for you.

What if reading itself feels like a chore, or someone who has always found solace in books suddenly cannot find the energy or the empathy to so much as pick up a favourite paperback? That’s when a bookseller can help you.

‘Patience is the key to contentment,’

A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline. About a woman who is bound to her home by illness, and her relationship with life and art.

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.

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.

Transcription by Kate Atkinson. The story of a woman who starts her career as a transcriptionist (is that the word?!) at MI5, and gets entangled with spies and Nazis. It’s both funny and absorbing.

Trix had not got the career she had hoped for, but once she made peace with restaurant life, she had been happy.

‘If you had read a book about a reading garden. What would it be like?’ ‘Warm. Comfortable. Good smells. No one knows you’re there. Leaves that move in the wind. A stone wall.’ She opens her eyes.

‘Find yourself a nice thing to do today,’

she and Nick make a point of having evenings they enjoy, because otherwise, what’s the point of anything?

her father, her mother’s husband, who was killed as her mother defended herself from his temper, his jealousy, his inability to process the disappointments in his life except by venting them on his wife.

it’s hard to remember that you’re the adult when a kid behaves as hurtfully as Madison did that day at Whitby.

quite often when things are called “classics” that’s what it means. Racist. Or sexist. Loveday gave me something about a man who locks his wife in the attic because you couldn’t get a divorce then and apparently millions of people have read it.’ Rosemary nods. ‘The world has changed a lot, even in my time, and mostly for the better. You liked The Secret Garden, though?’

you don’t blame women for what men do.

‘So now it’s my fault? I’ve heard you blame three women, so far, for the fact that you lied to me and kept on lying. Your wife, your daughter, and your – whatever I am. Idiot girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend who saw the light.’ Kelly

The tall man looks as though he might be pitying him. George could tell him that one day, he too will be old and tired and sad. But he doesn’t bother. Just as well. Who would trudge on knowing what was to come? Who would teach? Who would plant? Who would love? Who would care?

‘It sounds awful,’ Loveday says. She’s learned from her mother that all she needs to do, when she’s talking to someone who is having a tough time, is to agree.

go.) I think maybe doing a lot is some people’s way of coping. I have to confess, doing very little is mine.

Books talk about hearts as though they are good things but Loveday’s more often feels as though it is trying to choke her.

They take some trips up and down the country, with long weekends in bed-and-breakfasts in Melrose and Stratford-upon-Avon, and although they look at caravans, the fact is, they like home too much to ever want to spend more than a few days away from it.

The gentleness of readers is perfect when held against her slowly healing heart. She didn’t realise how much she’d missed conversations about books,

she had said to Nathan, ‘I will never be ready to lose you.’ ‘No,’ Nathan had said. ‘I’ll never be ready to lose you either.’ Since then, they have been closer than ever. Loveday has stopped pretending she is wholly separate. Nathan has stopped pretending he is always happy. They talk about the future, sometimes.