The Book Club by Maxim Februari

Author:Maxim Februari [Februari, Marjolijn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2007-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

4

The die was cast. Ruth Ackermann was coming. There was going to be a literary evening and Ruth was going to talk in the church. The bookseller had finally managed to get hold of the great writer; that is, he hadn’t spoken to her himself, but her publishers told him that Ruth Ackermann was happy to make time to drop in and talk to him about her book. For the first two weeks in May she would be in Germany and afterwards she had to go to the States, but the 18th was still free. The publisher’s PR woman said with some surprise in her voice that Ruth Ackermann was prepared to give up a day off to be able to come back to the place where she had grown up. The writer sent the bookseller her best regards, although she didn’t know him. And this should have been the moment when he danced round the shop and shouted ‘Yes!’ in triumph, but the bookseller wasn’t that sort of person. He grinned, and that had to suffice.

Up to now he had handled everything on his own, independently of the book club, independently of the volunteers who always turned up when a literary evening was organized – and whom he would shortly need again for coffee and tearing the tickets and looking after the flowers. For fear of making a fool of himself by being turned down by a celebrity, he had become quieter and quieter about his desire to get Ruth Ackermann to come to the village, but now she had said yes, and actually seemed to be looking forward to the evening, he had to hurry and immediately pulled out all the stops. He converted the shop window provisionally into a Ruth Ackermann display-case and placed piles of copies of the book in it. From the store behind the shop he retrieved a stand. It was a dazzling pop-up of the author: a life-size portrait on card. She looked a little uncomfortable, but friendly, and was holding a tray on which the bookseller, if he wanted to, could place books or brochures, or copies of the magazine interview that the publishers had supplied with the pop-up. He decided to position her right next to the till with an encouraging nod of the head. Then he could immediately place a subscription list for the literary evening on the tray.

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