I’m taking advantage of this brief window when Riley’s had his evening snack and is contentedly lying on a fuzzy pillow on the floor to write this single post for May. I can blame Riley for not posting, but I’m also blaming hockey for being behind in my reading. Ever since the last 2 games against the Tampa Bay Lightning, I’ve been obsessively watching the Montreal Canadiens playing and winning that round, then taking the next round to Game 7 against the Buffalo Sabres and winning, and now playing against the Carolina Hurricanes. It’s a lot of tv-watching, which also cuts into my reading time! I did read two books that I’ll tell you about briefly, and also a bunch of Silver Birch books which shall remain secret.
The first book I read had been on my shelf for about 20 years, and I had to make room for the new books I bought at the CFUW Book Sale, so I removed it from my shelf and thought that I’ll either read it or get rid of it. Am I ever glad I didn’t just get rid of it without giving it a try, because it was amazing! The book is An Audience of Chairs by Joan Clark (great title, right?!), and tells the story of a woman who suffers symptoms of bipolar disorder. As a young woman, people in her small Cape Breton town just thought Morvanna was eccentric, but her mother, too, struggled with mental illness until her untimely death, and her father tried to be supportive. She married young and became a mother shortly after her marriage. She always struggled, but her husband and father put her unusual behaviour down to her artistic temperament. But when one of her actions put the lives of her daughters at risk, her husband removed them and Morvanna became estranged for nearly two decades. When by chance she learns of her oldest daughter’s upcoming wedding, she yearns to attend and reintroduce herself to her daughters, but can she pull herself together sufficiently in time to get to the wedding? You’ll have to read the book to find out. And I would highly recommend that you do read this book. It was amazing, and highly readable, with credible characters and interesting settings and scenarios, and it dealt with mental health issues with compassion and empathy. What a great book by this bestselling Canadian author!
And I read a rather long but quite interesting book for my Friends Book Club, which is meeting tomorrow night. The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods is told from the points of view of three different characters and two different timelines, and explores the life of one of the most significant booksellers of the 1920s, and the perils she faces as she hides from her domineering brother. In the present day, we have a young woman from Dublin on the run from her abusive husband who meets a PhD candidate in search of a lost bookshop. Opaline is expected to marry her brother’s friend, a much older, dull man with whom she has nothing in common. She escapes to France, where she meets and begins working for Sylvia Beach at Shakespeare and Company Books, but must escape again and again as her brother tracks her down, recreating her life and future each time she goes on the run. Over a century later, Martha is running from her abusive husband and ends up in Dublin where she begins working as a live-in cleaner and general “help” for an elderly women who has an interesting, if secretive, past. When Martha wakes up in her basement room on the first morning, she sees a pair of shoes at her window and meets Henry, a PhD candidate who is trying to find a lost bookshop that supposedly contained the manuscript of a second novel by Emily Bronte, and which is purported to be located at this very address. Henry and Martha begin a friendship that slowly blossoms, but this budding relationship is not without its challenges, and these two young people must figure out a way to make it work while also pursuing their own freedom from their situations. Oh, and there’s a tree growing in Martha’s basement apartment, a tree that is growing out of the walls and into the ceiling, one that happens to be bearing books… hmmm… I found the magical elements a bit fantastical, and it was a bit too long and confusing, going back and forth between Opaline, Martha and Henry, but it was a love letter to books and bookstores and was definitely worth finishing. I’m curious to hear what the discussion is going to be like tomorrow night.
That’s all for now. Go, Habs, Go!! Oh, and keep reading!
Bye for now…
Julie
