The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Bivald Katarina

Author:Bivald, Katarina [Bivald, Katarina]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9781448192359
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Published: 2015-06-18T07:00:00+00:00

Dream Inflation

NOW THAT THE bookshop had been open for a little while, Sara was really starting to enjoy her days there, but it was a melancholy kind of enjoyment. She had started leaving the door ajar so that the scent of damp autumn air could mix with the smell of the books. For as long as she could remember, she had thought that autumn air went well with books, that the two both somehow belonged with blankets, comfortable armchairs and big cups of coffee or tea. This had never been clearer to her than right there, in her very own bookshop.

In Sara and Amy’s bookshop. That was what was so sad about it. She was constantly coming across things she should have asked Amy about. They had exchanged letters for more than two years, but there was still so much she had forgotten to ask. What had she even written about?

‘Do you believe in throwing books away?’ she asked Amy now, putting the question to the silence. She tried to avoid talking to Amy whenever there were customers in the shop, but now, just before the market, the majority of people in Broken Wheel seemed to have better things to do than visit her.

She was busy preparing a new shelf. She was leaning towards calling it ‘MEET THE AUTHORS’ and was thinking about ordering in some more literary biographies. So far, there were three books on the shelf, but she thought she could also put books about books there. In fact, Helene Hanff was the reason she was now wondering what Amy had thought about throwing books away.

She had just put 84, Charing Cross Road on the shelf. It was probably one of the most charming books about books that had ever been written, even after The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society had come out. The outspoken American Helene Hanff’s fantastic exchange of letters with an exceptionally British antiquarian was followed by the almost equally good The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, which was all about Helene Hanff finally arriving in her England.

Miss Hanff couldn’t understand people who didn’t throw books away. For her, there was nothing less worthy than a bad or average book, but Sara didn’t agree.

They were still books.

Sara sold them on or gave them away, but she couldn’t throw them out. Not even when they were so bad that she wondered whether it was defensible to share them with innocent new readers. She wondered what Amy would have thought.

When it came to biographies of authors, Amy had owned one about Jane Austen, one about Charlotte Brontë, and a novel about the Brontë sisters’ lives, The Taste of Sorrow. Fitting. Sara sighed. So far, her authors’ shelf was very sparse.

‘Do you think writing books makes you happier or unhappier?’ she asked as she placed the Jane Austen biography on the shelf.

She hoped the authors had been happier. She had always hoped that Jane could have looked out over her surroundings and thought: ‘I can create a

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.