Published by William Morrow 2016
ISBN 978-0-06-246725-6
332 pages
GENRE: Romance
Keywords: love of books, remaking of life, second chances, village life, rural community, Scotland, finding true love, happy endings,
Grade: 3/5
Nina Redmon, 29 years old, librarian in Birmingham, loves books, reading, strongly believes she is able to find a book for every one and anyone; for her the concept of ‘non-readers’ is unheard of.
Economic cuts and administrative restructuring means that a lot of small libraries have to close and become media centers, without books that are being sold off at next to nothing. Instead of having librarians they need technicians who’ help ninety-years-old, entire generations, that have been thrown into the world of computers, they do not understand because banks have closed so they are locked out of their money’.
Nina’s dream had been to have a bookshop, but cannot afford it, so she comes up with the idea to have a van full of books driving around and to sell to people. She finds a van in Scotland that she can afford, but when they refuse her to park the big van in Birmingham, she decides to stay in Scotland where people are very pleased to get books to read because the small libraries and book shops have disappeared.
In the beginning she was met with disbelief and mistrust, she is so small and insignificant how can she drive such a big van, the owner refuses to sell to her. But people are very interested in getting books again and help her; and gradually she wins over everybody. She calls her van ‘The Little Shop of Happy-Ever-after’. Nina finds that the small village life agrees with her much more than expected there are the fewer people and crowds, the grand nature, the fresh air was an unexpected pleasure. She appreciates the fact that everybody knows her and her problems and pleasures.
She becomes involved in the community, feels she contributes; her small hand helps birth of sheep twins, children with social problems gets the help they and their mother need, her landlord’s problems with his ex-wife she helps with a solution; she may read less than before, but she is satisfied and happy. She has an unhappy love affair before she found her true love.
My thoughts:
I am not impressed by Nina’s reading list, I thought it poor, uninteresting. I do like to read about bookstores and look at the reading lists, but this is uninspired.
It is a book about a successful re-make of a life for Nina; all her Birmingham friends envy her that she can continue to work with books and literature. The story about her love affairs a lot less interesting and exaggerated, not to my taste.
I liked the description of small village life, how people support each other to form a strong community. Also, the description of Scotland’s grand Nature is nice (I have not been there yet, but the Lake District is at the border and we were there in September), that is why I gave a grade 3 instead of 2.
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