Stevie‘s review of The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan
Women’s Fiction published by William Morrow Paperbacks 20 Sep 16
I usually get my Jenny Colgan fix via audiobooks, so it was quite a novelty to read the words of this new story and only hear the voice of regular narrator Penelope Rawlins in my imagination. Of course what really draws me to this author’s work is the plucky heroine, her various friends, and her potential love interests – not to mention the settings, which tend to be characterful in and of themselves. So how does Nina’s travelling bookshop measure up to the more or less static establishments that have featured in previous books?
Marvellously well, as it happens. Nina is a book lover, working at her dream job in a traditional urban branch library, and bringing home all the unloved second-hand books she can rescue – much to the despair of her housemate, who would like more space in their rooms for other items. Everything changes, however, on the day it is announced that the library services are being restructured and modernised: leaving no room for Nina’s home from home and its ragbag regulars. Unwilling to take a job at the new, modern media centre, Nina decides to use her redundancy money to set up a mobile bookshop. This leads to rejoicing from her housemate: all those stray books will find new homes! Nina will meet new people and maybe find herself a steady boyfriend!
As is the case with many of Colgan’s heroines, Nina launches herself into the plan with optimism and enthusiasm, but perhaps not enough foresight. Having bought a van on the internet, she has to travel to the north of Scotland in order to collect it – only to meet a group of locals who are aghast at the idea of so small a girl setting off in such a large and unwieldy vehicle. Nina persists, but soon discovers a whole host of red tape preventing her from achieving her ambitions in the city. Undaunted, she returns to Scotland, and sets up home in a tastefully converted barn belonging to a curmudgeonly farmer, whose interior designer wife dumped him once she’d completed the renovations.
I loved the way Nina was able to settle into her new life and make friends with the locals, and with other visitors – much to the astonishment of her old friends – and I cheered every time she managed to overcome another obstacle: from driving the van, to country dancing, to helping out on the farm she lives beside. I was fascinated by her ability to pair books and people, and by the way she managed to find out just what else might be needed by each of her new friends: even to the extent of roping in neighbours to help each other out. Not all of Nina’s escapades end completely happily, and at times she’s a little too keen to take people at face value. On the other hand, she and those around her grow and develop through the course of the book as they learn more about each other and themselves, and there are satisfactory conclusions to all the main plotlines. Definitely a book to reread on cold nights.
Grade: A
Summary:
Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.
Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile—a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling.
From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.
Read an excerpt.
