The Lost Bookshop

by Evie Woods

‘“On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur.”’

‘You’re a grown woman with a brain in your head, two good arms for carrying books and two strong legs to get you where you need to go.’

My father’s alcoholism is like a footnote to every chapter of my life.

I wondered what was the glue that held people together. Mutual disdain? Lack of any better idea?

Yet it struck me that being a woman was akin to a performance, with its cues and lines that had to be learned. I knew how I was supposed to act and what I was supposed to say, I just wasn’t exactly sure if I wanted to.

She read a story about a girl who had come to a fork in the road and was so afraid of making the wrong decision that she stayed where she was, huddled in the hollow of a tree.

I hated her and pitied her at the same time.

Looking over my shoulder for the life I should have had and never really being present in my own life.

architect of his own demise

I would write out entire passages from books that I loved, just to know what it would feel like to write those words.

It is strange how seemingly inconsequential conversations suddenly take on the mantle of fate and destiny when cast in a new light.

unlock the future or bolt the door.

‘Good enough for whom? For people who are trapped in a life that is not of their own making? Surely you can see that they merely want you to be trapped with them, so they will feel less alone in their emptiness. Be careful, Martha, you’ll become blind to your own value if you keep looking through the eyes of the bourgeoisie!’

It’s only in something’s absence that you realise how much space it takes up.

All of this time, we had kept our distance from one another. I suddenly realised that, at least for my part, it was purely out of fear of losing another person that I loved. I had fooled myself into thinking that if I didn’t allow myself to get close to him, I wouldn’t miss him if he left. Stupid, stupid woman. Intimacy is only one string on the bow. The instrument still plays the music.

Before you set out on a journey of revenge, you must dig two graves,’

manifest the expression of our own innate specialness.