So, needless to say, I suggest you skip this one and find one of those typical bookstore books to read instead. I honestly felt sad by how pathetic she was and found very little of it funny. Her refusal to visit her dying father, her many spiteful acts, her often illegal actions, had me wishing she would just find a good psychoanalyst. So many times as I read her drunken late night emails, I cringed. Instead, Fawn comes across as mentally ill, probably an alcoholic, and delusional. I think the author thought Fawn would be endearing with her eccentricities. The book is epistolary, told from Fawn’s point of view in mostly emails and journal entries. She is estranged from the rest of her family, after what she considered a horrible childhood.
Her only company is the old lady who rents an apartment in her building, her young employees, and a beloved elderly cat. Fawn’s store (and the apartment she lives in above it) is falling apart. With more than a mile of shelving, real log fires in the shop and the sea lapping nearby. The plot is basically what Fawn, the out of luck used bookstore owner, does when confronted with the competition of a shiny new book store which just opened across the street from her store. Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. So, I picked up Confessions of a Curious Bookseller by Elizabeth Green, expecting to read your typical bookstore book. They usually end very predictably with the store and the store owner being saved by some miraculous influx of money and a handsome prince charming. In this book, Bythell starts each month with an excerpt from a book called The Intimate Thoughts of John Baxter, Bookseller by Augustus Muir, a spoof diary (published 1942) in which a fictional John Baxter comments on the equally fictional Mr Pumpherston, and his interactions in his second hand bookshop of the era. I enjoy that niche genre about the down on her luck, lonely, bookstore owner (always a woman) who is struggling to keep her business afloat. Now it’s time for her to dig deep and use every trick at her disposal if she’s to reclaim her beloved business-and her life.Like most booklovers I am always drawn to books about bookstores and libraries. Through emails, journal entries, combative online reviews, texts, and tweets, Fawn plans her next move. Misguided yet blindly resilient, Fawn readies for battle.īut as she wages her war, Fawn is forced to reflect on a few unavoidable truths: the tribulations of online dating, a strained relationship with her family, and a devoted if not always law-abiding intern-not to mention what to do about a pen pal with whom she hasn’t been entirely honest and the litany of repairs her aging store requires.
When an amicable young indie bookseller invades her block, Fawn is convinced that his cushy couches, impressive selection, coffee bar, and knowledgeable staff are a neighborhood blight. Without question, Fawn Birchill knows that her used bookstore is the heart of West Philadelphia, a cornerstone of culture for a community that, for the past twenty years, has found the quirkiness absolutely charming. A heartening and uproariously funny novel of high hopes, bad choices, book love, and one woman’s best-and worst-intentions.
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