154. The Bookstore
Rating: ☆☆1/2
Recommended by:
Author: Debra Meyler
Genre: Fiction
343 pages, published August 20, 2013
Reading Format: Book
Summary
The Bookstore tells the story of Esme Garland, a young, impressionable and idealistic British woman who studying art history at Columbia University in New York. Shortly after arriving in the States, Esme starts dating Mitchell van Leuven, who is everything Esme thinks she wants: rich, handsome, confident and successful. Unfortunately, Mitchell is also an arrogant jerk who dumps Esme before she can tell him that she is pregnant. Esme tries to go it alone, but Mitchell manages to worm his way back into her life. We follow Esme on her rollercoaster relationship where the only source of stability in her life is her part-time job at a quirky book store populated by various unique and warm hearted characters.
Quotes
“Used books,” as if someone else has had the best of them and you get the sere husk, or the lees, as if a book isn’t the one thing, the one product, that is forever new. There’s no such thing as a used book. Or there’s no such thing as a book if it’s not being used.”
“One age might pass over what another prized, and the next age might then revere it”
“People write for ego gratification, not money.”
“Things didn’t seem promising initially. I arrived like everyone else did, after swearing that I wasn’t a spy or guilty of moral turpitude, and that I hadn’t got any snails. In the first, bewildering minutes outside JFK, on a Friday night in the rain, I stared out at veering yellow cabs, airport staff screaming abuse at cowboy operators, sleek limos nosing along the bedlam, the whole teetering on the brink of chaos. I thought, as many people do, This is impossible. I won’t be able to manage this. But then, we do manage- we manage to get into the city without being murdered, and wake up the next day still alive, and shortly afterwards we are striding down Broadway in the sun.”
“I think there is no difference between love and infatuation. If it works out, we call it love; if it doesn’t, we shrug our shoulders and say it was infatuation. It’s a hindsight word.”
“We’re high on the adrenaline of feeling, even though we know it’s fleeting and evanescence. And we’re getting worse — checking texts and emails and Facebook every five minutes, always searching for that next hit of feeling, that next morsel of approval.”
“Americans have all these classes that mean they just know odd things, so engineers know about William Blake and poets know about analytical geometry. She probably took one on Aristotle and the politics of gender.”
“When people say “to father,” they generally mean that one biological act—the act of begetting a child. It is different with the verb “to mother.” “To mother” implies care. A man’s act of fathering can easily be that one seed sown; a woman’s act of mothering can take up all the rest of her life.”
My Take
The Bookstore was an okay read, but nothing really special. I liked it more when I first read it, but thinking back on it two months later (at the time of writing this review), I discover that it hasn’t worn well. There was nothing unique or intriguing in it and I found it hard to relate to Esme and her choices.
