Stevie‘s review of The Lost for Words Bookshop by Stephanie Butland
Women’s Fiction published by Thomas Dunne Books 19 Jun 18
Often, when a book is published under different titles on opposite sides of the Atlantic, I find that the UK version appeals to me better. However, in the case of Lost for Words/The Lost for Words Bookshop, the more self-explanatory US title was the one that attracted my attention. And it’s the second-hand bookshop of the title where much of this story unfolds, the place where our heroine, Loveday Cardew, has worked since the owner caught her shoplifting a copy of Possession when she was a teenager (to be fair, she’d had her purse stolen, and had left the last of her pocket-change in the shop as part-payment).
Having grown up in foster-care and witnessed violence between her parents before that, Loveday has difficulty trusting people, yet is generous to a fault with those around her, whether she knows them or not. When she finds a poetry book in the street, she is keen to reunite it with its owner, which is how she meets Nathan Avebury, a professional magician and regular attendee at a local open mic poetry night. Loveday’s one previous relationship has not ended well, making her all the more reluctant to trust Nathan; nonetheless she begins attending the poetry nights and slowly gains the courage to read out her own works.
Loveday’s burgeoning relationship with Nathan seems to be headed for bigger things, when she begins finding familiar books in the boxes of new acquisitions she’s sorting through: not just titles and editions she remembers from her childhood, but the exact same copies that once sat on her and her mother’s bookshelves. Her suspicions fall on both Nathan and her ex-boyfriend, as well as on anyone else who might have encountered her estranged mother, and all the associated worry creates a rift between Loveday and Nathan that even Loveday’s kindly boss and his varied circle of eccentric friends and associates seem unable to repair.
I loved Archie, the bookshop owner, by the way. He’s one of those characters who will spin impossibly tall stories, only for them to later turn out to have been almost entirely true. And when disaster strikes yet again, it’s Archie’s kindness and forward planning that ultimately saves the day for Loveday and helps her both reconcile herself to her past and see how to achieve the future she deserves.
Told through various intertwining timelines, this is a rich and complex book, in which Loveday’s character and past history are only very slowly revealed. Some aspects of her life are told also through her poetry and Nathan’s, and in the end it’s a love of both poetry and other forms of literature that binds the characters together. I can’t wait to discover more by this new-to-me author.
Grade: A
Summary:
Loveday Cardew prefers books to people. If you look carefully, you might glimpse the first lines of the novels she loves most tattooed on her skin. But there are some things Loveday will never, ever show you.
Into her hiding place – the bookstore where she works – come a poet, a lover, and three suspicious deliveries.
Someone has found out about her mysterious past. Will Loveday survive her own heartbreaking secrets?
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