Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

The Bookstore: A Book Club Recommendation!
The Bookstore: A Book Club Recommendation!
The Bookstore: A Book Club Recommendation!
Ebook421 pages6 hours

The Bookstore: A Book Club Recommendation!

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

3/5

()

Read preview

About this ebook

A witty, sharply observed debut novel about a young woman who finds unexpected salvation while working in a quirky used bookstore in Manhattan.

Brilliant, idealistic Esme Garland moves to Manhattan armed with a pres­tigious scholarship at Columbia University. When Mitchell van Leuven—a New Yorker with the bluest of blue New York blood—captures her heart with his stunning good looks and a penchant for all things erotic, life seems truly glorious...until a thin blue line signals a wrinkle in Esme’s tidy plan. Before she has a chance to tell Mitchell about her pregnancy, he suddenly declares their sex life is as exciting as a cup of tea, and ends it all.

Determined to master everything from Degas to diapers, Esme starts work at a small West Side bookstore, finding solace in George, the laconic owner addicted to spirulina, and Luke, the taciturn, guitar-playing night manager. The oddball customers are a welcome relief from Columbia’s high-pressure halls, but the store is struggling to survive in this city where nothing seems to last.

When Mitchell recants his criticism, his passion and promises are hard to resist. But if Esme gives him a second chance, will she, like her beloved book­store, lose more than she can handle? A sharply observed and evocative tale of learning to face reality without giv­ing up on your dreams, The Bookstore is sheer enchantment from start to finish.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherGallery Books
Release dateAug 20, 2013
ISBN9781476714257
The Bookstore: A Book Club Recommendation!
Author

Deborah Meyler

Deborah Meyler was born in Manchester, read English at Oxford University, and completed a Master of Philosophy thesis on American fiction at St. Andrews University. She eventually moved to New York, where she worked in a bookshop for six years, sold paintings, and had three children. She now lives in Cambridge and is working on her next novel.

Related to The Bookstore

Related ebooks

Contemporary Romance For You

View More

Related articles

Related categories

Reviews for The Bookstore

Rating: 3.0705126974358974 out of 5 stars
3/5

156 ratings30 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5

    This and other reviews can be found on Reading Between Classes

    Cover Impressions: This cover is very pretty and I am loving that there is just a hint of cleavage (nothing distasteful).

    Review:
    The Bookstore is the story of a young woman who escapes England for the excitement of New York. While completing her degree, she meets and falls in love with a suave and wealthy man. When she finds herself pregnant and jilted, she takes a job at a local bookstore and contemplates the path that her life has taken. It is a story with very little action and a plot that meanders through scenes that compel the reader to smile or grimace, rather than to laugh or cry.

    The love interest/future father was a truly despicable character. From the first few scenes, I found myself hoping that he would meet a timely demise. Unfortunately, Esme's infatuation with him and her inability to see how badly he was treating her, made me dislike her whenever they were on the page together. To be fair, at least Mitchell managed to make an impression. The Bookstore features an almost entirely male cast and I did have some difficulty keeping them straight. I could never remember which characters worked in the store and which were homeless men thrown in with some type of attempt at social commentary.

    The Bookstore itself, The Owl, is what piqued my interest in this title. I was hoping for a magical realm full of interesting characters. However, I found the scenes within the store to be some of the most tedious. The author had an unfortunate habit of referencing obscure authors and artists that I found pretentious. I often ended up skimming during those parts.

    The ending of The Bookstore was unsatisfying. There is some character growth, but no real closure and I am still unsure as to how Esme is managing to support herself and her child without being deported. This novel is nice for a slow read in a park/at the cottage but simply did not have enough action to distract me from the other demands on my time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Esme, a British student with a scholarship to study art history at Columbia, discovers she’s pregnant and gets a job at a quirky secondhand bookshop. With some books I keep reading because I want to see a couple get together; this book I kept reading because I wanted to see Esme finally, properly, free of her awful boyfriend. He’s so awful that I would have found some of Esme’s choices -- and the book itself -- terribly frustrating, except I really liked the bookshop, the Owl, and Esme’s narration.I liked Esme’s quotes and references and her enthusiasm and her observations, especially those about living in New York and about the Owl -- this is a story with a vivid sense of place. Her naivety and optimism is understandable -- she’s only in her early twenties, she’s facing something terrifyingly life-changing, her parents are an ocean away, and manipulative people can be hard to see clearly when you’re caught in their web. And while I wouldn’t have said that this -- unplanned pregnancy, awful boyfriend -- was something I wanted to read about, it was kind of fascinating to explore what that could be like.There is a complicity in his eyes now that makes my heart soar. I know I will regret this. I know that worthy heroines in Regency romances never say yes when there is any doubt as to the state of the hero’s heart, but I am made of flesh, not words. I want to be with Mitchell. If I am with him, I can make him see that I am worth loving. Perhaps it is the other way round, and he doesn’t see yet that he is worth loving too. I can make him see that. And if it all goes wrong, I will suffer, but the suffering won’t be for the strangled impulse, the unlit lamp. I will light the lamp and burn myself on the flame.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The heart has no IQ.In Deborah Meyler’s 2013 novel “The Bookstore,” Esme Garland is a young British woman studying art history in the Columbia University graduate program. She falls in love with the wrong man, a handsome economist from a wealthy New York family who is demanding, selfish, manipulative, sexually aggressive (as long as he is the one calling the shots), suicidal and maybe worse. Everyone who reads this book will be smart enough to know that Luke, the sensitive young man who works with Esme at the Owl Bookstore, is a better match for her than Mitchell van Leuven. But not Esme, who seems willing to accept any insult, any abuse if only Mitchell will love her. He doesn’t.For most of the novel she is pregnant with Mitchell’s baby. He abandons her, returns to demand she get an abortion, accepts her decision to have the baby, pushes her toward a quick marriage, abandons her again. In a nutshell that is the story, except that the nutshell ignores the best part of the story, namely Esme’s job at the Owl and her relationships with her fellow employees, mostly men whose consideration for her and her pregnancy is so excessive it becomes comical. Yet these other men, including some homeless ones who hang around the store, demonstrate each working day that there are better men out there are than the depressed and depressing Mitchell.Like Esme, Meyler is a young British woman with a college degree (hers is from Oxford) who moves to New York City and gets a job at an independent bookstore. So “The Bookstore “ is autobiographical up to a point. It is beyond that point where she demonstrates her skill as a writer of fiction.Esme’s choice of Mitchell as a lover and possible husband is not the only illogical choice in the novel. In fact, there are so many that illogical choice becomes the novel’s theme. She chooses to have the baby even though it will interfere with her academic pursuits. The bookstore manager hires her even though he knows her to be pregnant. Some of those homeless men have housing opportunities but prefer to live on the street.Life is all about choices, and reason isn’t always our guide when we make those choices.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    unfortunately I couldn't finish this one. It sounded like a great story, but it just doesn't engage me at all....I'm sure it will be perfect for others, but it just wasn't for me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    While I found this to be a cute, fun story in which the bookstore itself became a character, I also found this novel to be a bit forgettable. The Bookstore is an enjoyable read starring Esme Garland, a Brit trying to get her PhD in art history at Columbia. While living in New York, she meets a slew of characters, many of whom seemed to be stock characters for this type of novel, and has a few adventures before realising that the rich snob of old money that she has fallen for has knocked her up. The problem is, that he doesn't seem to return her feelings and is acting only out of a sense of decorum.

    **I received a copy of this book from NetGalley**
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Book was good but didn't care for the unfinished feeling of the ending. No closure to characters.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Ugh! What a silly book. I kept trying to read this but the characters infuriated me. Don't pick this up if you think you'll be reading about a bookstore, you will be sorely disappointed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    WARNING: Spoilers Ahead!I have mixed feelings about this book. I liked the premise of it, I guess, but I had some hang-ups that prevent me from giving this book 4 stars.For starters, I don't understand Esme and Mitchell's relationship at all. He treats her so horribly, and she quite literally worships the ground he walks on. I mean, has this girl never been in a relationship before? Has she never *seen* a functional relationship before? I can't even begin to wrap my brain around why she likes Mitchell, and that's really damaging to my sympathy. She's not a battered woman, she has friends and a (seemingly) good home-life, she's getting by financially, she's an *intelligent* girl working on her PhD... I just don't get it.Second. What the hell, Mitchell? Mitchell is in serious need of some professional help. Like SERIOUS need. He is so dysfunctional I don't even know where to begin. Unfortunately, we see a lot of him being an ass in the first portion of the book, and it doesn't really seem like anything more than "wow, what a douche" until the last 50-ish pages of the book. I guess that redeemed him a little bit -- A SUPER TEENY TINY LITTLE BIT -- but... just wow. WOW. I can't even say it really redeems him -- it just explains it. I will say that Mitchell's harshness and douchebaggery even made me gasp a few times, but all that really did was make me want to shake Esme that much harder for "loving" him. That's not love, babe. That is some seriously unhealthy high school infatuation. Granted, I suppose if I got knocked up I'd want to try to save whatever I had with the father, too, but I feel like there comes a point when you just have to say enough is enough. Esme couldn't do that. And I really hope for her sake and for the sake of poor little Georgie that she comes to that realization after the book's conclusion: you have to do what's right for you, not what's ideal, because, honestly, the ideal isn't real. NOW. Things that worked really well for me:Meyler uses a significant amount of imagery and constant references to art and artistic devices, which, if your book is in third person is fine. But this story is told in present (which is a little odd) first person. Because Esme is working on a PhD in art, this totally works and really adds to the beauty of the writing. I liked that a lot.I also LOVED the atmosphere of the bookstore. If this was a bigger or more well-known retailer this would not have worked, but the smallness of it demanded these kinds of relationships. All of the employees knew each other, and the employees and the customers knew each other, and they all knew about each other's lives, and they had shut-ins together, and hosted holiday parties together (a party of misfits who fit together perfectly). That's really kind of my favorite part. It really made The Owl feel like a safe haven, which it needed to be for Emse. My only thought is that, considering it's smallness, it may have been a little too over-employed.I feel like this is a book I'll better appreciate after I've had my own first pregnancy. I think there's a lot going on here that I just can't quite relate, too, and some things I might realistically feel different about having experience them myself and whatnot, but for now, 3 stars. Not bad, Miss Meyler.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    When Deborah Meyler focuses on her primary subject: a small New York bookstore, the people who work there, and its customers, the book is both charming and juicy. It feels real. But someone (the author? an editor?) decided the primary subject wasn't good enough. So there a plot device is dropped into the novel as if from a helicopter. The main character, a lovely, accomplished, and confident young woman, falls in love with -- wait for it -- a rich, handsome rotter who treats her like dirt. Readers are subjected to the spectacle of her coming back to him over and over, while his bad behavior escalates.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    The bad: This book is terrible. If I could give it zero stars I would. I didn't even finish it. And I finished The Intuistionist. Before I decided to drop it, I did read some reviews to make sure it didn't become spectacular at some point. It doesn't.

    The main character has as much backbone as a limp dish rag. About the same amount of sense. She's very naïve. We get little to no development about any of the characters, not even Esme or her family.

    The guy is a chauvinistic, prickish, entitled asshole. If you don't have a Masters in Art History most of the descriptions will go over your head.

    The Good: I liked the quirky people she works with. I love the description of the bookstore. I especially like the name. Cover was good.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A solid book full of yearning, misguided emotions, and brilliant lyricism with an undercurrent of heartbreaking realism. A wonderful book for those who like character driven plots, art history, second hand bookstores, emotional dilemmas, and strident hope.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the kind of modern novel that makes you want to thank the author for writing it.Plot evolves smoothly, with unexpected nuances as books and music are introduced and people join in. As well, the characters reveal themselves slowly, situationally, as in real life and standapart from each other, both different and true in their perspectives.Except for Mitchell. Not only is there little explanation for his desultory character and declining mental state, but, though readers do not expect a decent epiphany, there is nothing good going on except for Esme continuing to be head over heels, over and over. Despite his repeated lies and truly yucky attempts at pseudo-seduction,she persists in making him into what he obviously does not want to be.It was astonishing that she continued to see him as a potential mate after the Anastasia episode.She had no response, thinking or action, to Anastasia's warning. This made little sense in a character that was otherwise developing inner strengthand allowed the story go on for too long too weakly without readers being able to understand or trust her judgement. Would she want her child to act so passively?If there is a sequel, please let Luke and Esme take some of her books and some great new books to Mrs.Kasperek.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This would have been a much better book if it had only been about the bookstore and all of the characters who worked there, shopped there, or just showed up. The whole back and forth with the boyfriend Mitchell, and having a baby was tedious and unneeded, and for me detracted from the story.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I was attracted to this book by the cover showing a pile of books. Who wouldn't love that? But the story was disappointing. Esme is a PhD candidate at Columbia and, one would think, very bright and motivated. Unfortunately she doesn't use those qualities in her choice of a bed partner and becomes pregnant. The book took a nose dive after that announcement and I just couldn't go on. She isn't the first unmarried mother and won't be the last but I don't want to have that conversation again. The bookstore she works in to make extra money to support this child has potential but I just couldn't warm up to the characters that float through there. George is the owner but appears so seldom as to be non-existent. I read 50 pages because I was desperate for something to read but I give up.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Deborah Meyler's writing still is so lovely and descriptive. However, I soon discovered that the book contained far too many detailed sexual situations and I decided not to finish reading the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Esme moves from England to New York to attend graduate school in art history at Columbia. She ends up pregnant by her significantly older (and much richer) boyfriend and must decide how to proceed with life given this unexpected development. The bookstore of the title is The Owl, an independent used bookstore where she takes a job and begins to find a family.I passed this one up a few times thinking it was probably the sort of chick lit that I might enjoy a bit but wouldn't find terribly satisfying. When I finally did succumb, I found something much more substantive than I was expecting. Meyler explores the emotional realities of Esme's situation with a fair amount of depth, and Esme finds no easy, pat solutions. Esme was a compelling character, and so many of her observations and fears were familiar to me that reading about her was one of those joyful experiences full of "me too!" moments. The book is not without its flaws, not least of which is the character of Esme's boyfriend, who it is beyond me how she ever fell in love with or how the reader is ever meant to empathize with him in any way. He's described as kind of a privileged jerk who never-the-less is charming and somehow likeable. I have kind of a weak spot for that kind of fictional character, especially if there's some super-tragi-sad reason why said character is a jerk, so if this dude was charming, I would have liked him. I hated him. And what's worse, I couldn't figure out why Esme loved him. This bothered me throughout the book because it felt like a flaw in the crafting of the story--it's cool if I hate him, but I should get why the heroine doesn't. Thankfully, he was off-page much of the time. Worthwhile for the study of Esme, despite the perplexing boyfriend character.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler was one of those books that I didn't fall in love with from the get-go, but did enjoy once I plugged along. What I did love from the get-go was Esme. Meyler created a dynamic and intriguing character quite quickly. I was impressed with the depth I found within Esme (and equally impressed with the lack thereof in Mitchell). Once The Owl was introduced as Esme's refuge, I was instantly hooked. That was when the story took off for me. Meyler created quite the cast of characters within The Owl. She created a bookstore that I would love to visit- I could picture myself as a regular there. Meyler also did something that I haven't experienced before in a novel: she gave vibrancy and life to people that are often overlooked- both in writing and in real life. The homeless men of NYC are often depicted as scary - Meyler pulled back the cover and introduced beautiful humans instead of the typical fear tactic that is so prevalent in books featuring the City. I appauld her for that! I also liked the story overall, once I got through the very beginning. I think that it was charming and endearing. The story was a great coming of age tale, and one of those books that I think all early to mid twenty-somethings should read. This is a book that I wish I had read just a few years earlier- if only it had been written then! I do feel some of it was predictable, as far as "chick lit" goes, however the characters and the bookstore more than made up for it. If you're looking for a classic New York City twenty-something coming of age chick-lit, this is the one for you!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book gives us real life characters: the good, the bad and the ugly. Esme finds herself making difficult life choices. She is a likeable girl though and I was pulling for her all the way. Esme is hopelessly in love with Mitchell from the start, but will she wise up and make good decisions? Esme is a good person inside and out, but a little naive at the start. Esme grows throughout this book and finds a new family at the bookstore, full of people that she comes to count on. I was disappointed that her real family played such a minor role in the book. She seemed to have minimal contact with them. This book was okay, light contemporary reading. I give it a 3 out of 5 stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed reading this story very much! I felt as if I was getting a peek into someone's private life-the things they usually keep a secret. A view of New York at its worst and finest. It made me want to live there more than I already do.

    I am now in desperate need of a visit to New York thanks to this book. If The Owl was a real bookstore I would hop on a train and make a visit immediately. I want to meet these characters, I want to browse the shelves of the books in the store.

    Throughout the story I was hoping that Esme would ditch the douchebag Mitchell and start up a relationship with Luke. He was obviously the one she was meant to be with. The story was left open so I like to think that Luke, Esme, and baby Georgie are living happily ever after, and The Owl is going strong.

    My favorite parts of the book:


    Favorite quote from the book:"Why do people still buy books? They just take up space. "
    "What is the space for if you don't fill it with books?"

    "These books...," she begins, and stops. I am frightened; for her, for myself decades from now, struggling to retain dignity with two strangers as they take away my books. I can see the straight line to her grave, to mine.
    "I know, ma'am," Luke is saying."
    "They are all my life. "
    She looks out of the window. I can see the muscles of her face that are clamping her jaw. I know the action so well that it makes tears well in me too. She doesn't speak. Luke stands still in the doorway; he doesn't speak either. The silence goes on, and it is unendurable. It is the silence of the empty shelves, of the shutting down of a mind's exploring.

    If you didn't like this book, well then simply put, you shouldn't be reading books.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Esme is a grad student in an art history program at Columbia and on her own in NYC. With her family left behind in England, Esme has no support in the city, but soon learns to love the fast paced city life, the culture, and even the light that slants between the buildings. Without a job, Esme takes a position at her favorite used bookstore, the Owl, which is a book-lovers dream. Her new coworkers, who argue and debate about literature and history, soon embrace her as one of their own. On the surface, and in many ways, this book is quite lovely, descriptive, and heartwarming. It is exceedingly well-written and enjoyable to read. Unfortunately, plopped in the middle is the primary storyline, a predictable romance between Esme and Mitchell, involving an unwanted pregnancy. Mitchell is truly an ass without any redeeming characteristics, and brilliant and naive Esme is blind to his flaws. This continues for about 95% of the book, which makes for a painful and frustrating reading experience. Of course the conflict resolves eventually, but the ending is not sufficient to compensate for the suffering along the way. I loved Esme, her neighbor, her coworkers, and the homeless who help out at the Owl, but the juvenile chick-lit storyline was too predictable and unnecessary for my taste.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I really enjoyed this debut novel by Deborah Meyler – The Book Store. First, the cover is a huge draw if you are a book lover. I enjoyed the e-book and was hard to put down – a mixture of some great literary quotes and references, classic authors, set in a cozy NY quaint independent bookstore. (Can envision myself and the characters on a cool rainy night away from the hustle and bustle of the city, curled up with a good read and a cup of tea). A mix of some quirky characters, from the homeless, celebrities, lesbian friend, vegans, nutty, to the rich and rude Van Leuven’s (with tidbits of humor) which will keep you smiling!

    The book centers around the main character – Esme (Englishwoman) graduate of Oxford, now in NY, working on her PHD at Columbia – loving all NY has to offer -- meets her older prince charming Mitchell. Mitchell is not as he appears – he is rude, weird, and has somehow wrapped her around his finger. He is from wealthy Van Leuven family who does not accept Esme. When Esme – finds herself pregnant, Mitchell is not willing to support her decision to keep the baby. He goes back and forth from on and off jerking her like a puppet.

    Esme finds solace at a quaint nearby bookstore- The Owl, and develops friendships with George and Luke as well as a cast of homeless helpers, among others. During her pregnancy she relies on her true new friends to help her through the trying times. Esme is naïve at times; however, she is smart and does the best she can to make a home and family for her baby within this culture.

    Of course, we all despised the character Mitchell and loved Luke. With the ending left open, I hope the book will be continued with a possible relationship between Luke/Esme and her new baby daughter, Georgia.

    Highly recommend this debut novel and look forward to more from this author. I feel with her experience living in Europe and NY, working at bookstores, being a mother and writer – she has great insights to the subject matter making this a pleasant and engaging read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved this book. Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised since I love bookstores, but I was afraid to hope for too much. It is a bittersweet story of a young woman who eventually discovers that love is not a reason to sacrifice who you are inside. I found the narrative to be melodious yet real. There was a genuine quality to the story and to the main character, Esme, that is often missing in modern or chick lit. genre. Of course the story revolves around a bookstore. It is probably quite an ordinary used bookstore in NYC. I found it though to be a magical setting because of the people who work there. Their uniqueness and quirkiness reminded me of some 70's TV shows that were quite popular because of their eclectic casts; shows like Taxi, Cheers, and Barney Miller. They had a special chemistry that was extraordinary in drawing us into the plot and making us care about them. This is what the author has done in this book. I found myself falling for each of the people in and around the bookstore and wishing that I could meet them in person. Some people who reviewed the book appear to be put off by the author's use of first person in writing it, but I found it to be powerful in creating the feeling that I was a friend and part of the story. If you enjoy books that tug on your heart, and particularly if you are a book and/or bookstore lover, you will probably enjoy this book as much as I did. I would recommend giving it a try. I am very grateful to Gallery books and NetGalley for the chance to read and review this book. It touched a special place in my heart, and I will be watching for more from Ms. Meyler.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler What first attracted me to want to read this book is for the simple fact it's about a bookstore. I love books!Love all the detailed descriptions of New York, feel like I'm walking beside Esme. She is from England and has only been in a city a short while.She meets up with Mitchell and they check out various restaurants. After just a few short weeks she is pregnant and rather than tell him, she was going to, til he broke up with her.She is going to be able to afford the baby but has many doubts. College, job and the baby will be her life. Love how the information at the bookstore is shared with anybody that walks in-especially like book titles and author's names and a quick summary of what the book is about.She has just a few who support her decision...Love hearing of all the characters who pay a visit, so colorful!Quite erotic sex talk and acts. When Mitchell comes back into her life, is it for her and is it for keeps or is he just passing by? I received this book from Net Galley via Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books in exchange for my honest review.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Love the descriptions of the bookstore, this was an ode to bookstores everywhere, the books, the smells, captured perfectly. The book descriptions and the quirky characters who inhabit this cozy store. Esme, an art history starts out as an endearing character, one can't help but want good things for her, and as a reader I just wanted to shove Mitchell off a bridge. Unfortunately as the story went on I got a little tired of the lovelorn Esme, and the snake named Mitchell. May answer the question though, "Can one find more than books in a bookstore?" A light, quick and oftentime quirky read, with a little art history thrown in.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Esme Garland is a whipsmart 23 year old English student studying for a PhD in art history at Columbia University. Her boyfriend, Mitchell, comes from an extremely wealthy family and has issues that run deeper than the Grand Canyon. When Esme discovers that she is pregnant, Mitchell breaks it off with her before she even has the chance to tell him. Nevertheless, Esme decides to keep the baby and takes a part time job in a used bookstore to supplement her small scholarship income. The bookstore is run by a colourful cast of characters who will all take a great interest in Esme's life and become her surrogate family.There are many things that I liked about this debut novel. Meyler has a lively writing style which brings New York to life. The opening chapter had me itching to jump on a plane and walk the streets. She has a way of picking up on the smallest of observations - how to pick the freshest bagel in the store, how the light falls between buildings - which make you feel like you're really there. The story hums along and is a very easy read. For the most part there are no major surprises, but there are a few little kinks in the path. Esme makes a likeable heroine and it drove me crazy that she couldn't see through Mitchell. I had to keep reminding myself how taken by exteriors I was at the same age.Where the book fell down for me, oddly enough, was the bookstore where Esme works. I started to get irritated by the cast of loveable eccentrics and I also felt that the writer shied away from making a definite call on whether there was going to be a romantic sub-plot or not. Frankly, I would have felt it more satisfying if Esme had exhibited some personal growth over the book, if she had learned to see through Mitchell sooner/better, if she had realised her own worth. Even the ending read like the author couldn't quite decide how to finish things, so she just hit "save" on the file and sent it off to the publisher.Having said that, I must stress that for me, a three star rating is not a negative review but an evenly balanced "there is good and bad here". If you are looking for an intelligent chicklit book which goes down easily and gives you a feel of being somewhere else for a while, look no further.I received a review copy through NetGalley.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The BookstorebyDeborah MeylerMy" in a nutshell" summary...A young woman, an sort of a bit older man, a bookstore and a baby...a formula for complicated lives...My thoughts after reading this book...My thoughts are warm and fuzzy after reading this book. It was lovely...and took place in my favorite city...NYC! Esme is British and is in NYC working on her PHD at Columbia. She meets and falls in love with Mitchell...Mitchell is older, wealthy, secretive, cold and I knew from the start that Esme needed to drop him...but I also knew that Esme wouldn't. She is enthralled and believes in the power of love plus she gets preggers...by Meanie Mitchell. This isn't a spoiler, either...it's in the summary. Before she has a chance to tell him...he dumps her. This is where all of the wonderfulness in this book begins!Esme decides to keep her baby and continue on with her life without Meanie Mitchell but he pops back in...darn! Esme goes to work at this very lovely quirky bookstore called The Owl. The characters in and around the store are wonderful...cherishable...sad...and quirky. I love Esme and the bookstore characters. What I loved most about this book...It was just so NYC name dropping lovely. Coffee shops, museums, Sarabeth's, Zabar's...cabs...everything about Esme's life in the city was delightful! When she zipped to Zabar's and bought dinner...cold poached salmon, rocket salad, dense chocolate cake...OMG...I dashed out to Whole Foods and bought the same dinner. Esme was so admirable...so unique...the only thing she was stupid about was Mitchell. What I did not love about this book...Mitchell and his family...except for Uncle Beeky...were the most despicable people in fictional history! But that made this book so good! Final thoughts...Readers who love a long lovely narrative with fascinating characters and lots of old book and author references will love this book. I can honestly say it's one of my favorites this year!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Did you ever read a book and the more you got into it, the more it seems like you read it already but nothing in your records shows that you did? I didn’t blog about it. It’s not in my Librarything library. Yet, the more I read The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler, the more I remembered reading it…but maybe not.The plot is simple. Brit Esme Gardner is on scholarship at Columbia to study art history, in particular Thiebaud. Several weeks into her New York residency, she attends an art gallery event and meets the ultra rich, ultra suave Mitchel van Leuven, an old monied guy. During their one and only unprotected sexual encounter, Esme gets pregnant. After deciding to keep the baby, she must then decide to tell or not tell Mitchell. Since they’re not an ‘item’, she decides against it. Thinking that money might come in handy with a baby on the way, Esme sees a help wanted since in the Owl Bookstore that she frequents and gets the job. Of course she ultimately does tell the father. You can guess the rest. It is no secret that Mitchell is a shit and ultimately her bookstore friends win out.The book jacket says “A sharply observed and evocative tale of learning to face reality without giving up your dreams, The Bookstore is sheer enchantment from start to finish.” And it is. You’ll fall in love with Esme, with the bookstore employees and customers. You’ll truly hate Mitchell, right from the start. So, people who aren’t familiar with this particular bookstore, but love bookstores in general, will certainly enjoy this book.Ms. Meyler, actually British herself, worked in a bookstore on Broadway in the upper west side, which apparently is a source for her bookstore.Westsider2 I have no doubt it is Westsider Books on Broadway between 80th and 81st Streets. When she new_york_361_westsider_books_4e9348a06a1074578c000273_store_main_newdescribes the narrow staircase with books on both sides, this is what I envision. I can see the books two deep on the shelves. I can picture the cramped quarters upstairs and the books going all the way up to the ceiling.So, for me, the book had an extraWestsiders3added attraction. I wondered, as I read the book, whether Ms. Meyler was working on any of the days I wandered through its aisles. It’s definitely possible. So, the two things you should do are : (i) read The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler and (ii) go to Westsider Books. Enjoy.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was an enjoyable read… some slow at times but that was ok, slow, if written well,will keep your interest! Right down to the name "Esme Garland", just loved it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A wonderful ode to books and New YorkThe Bookstore by Deborah Meyler is a wonderful ode to books, bookshops and New York. Like all good authors Meyler has included plenty of her life experiences and loves and especially a love for New York City. A born and bred Mancunian who after Oxford and St Andrews Universities lived out in New York a city she fell in love with and that comes through in the novel.Esme Garland our protagonist in the story is a 23 year old art history graduate of the world famous Cambridge University has won a scholarship to Columbia to study for a doctorate. Thousands of miles from home she falls in love with an economics lecture, Mitchell who is from old money in New York. Their relationship is very much an on/off relationship and she finds herself pregnant and alone. She decides she will keep the baby and looks for work to help support the child alongside her university studies. She finds employment at The Owl a second hand bookstore, a place where she has looked in a number of times. Throughout the book with love being an unreliable force with Mitchell it is The Owl that provides her with a crook to hold on to and find a definition of love and hope. It is Owl in Manhattan that provides her with a refuge from the world outside where she loves the books, the customers and her co workers. There are so many wonderful literary references throughout the novel it helps to make the book very comforting.This is a wonderful book a masterful debut novel that some people have wrongly labelled chick lit it is many things it is not chick lit! This is a beautifully written witty debut novel from Deborah Meyler that is an ode to love, love of a child, the love of books and the love of characters that surround themselves around books.I cannot recommend this book highly enough – the pleasure last from the first to the last page a wonderful story.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I imagine there are few avid readers who could pass up a book set in a bookstore and the Owl is the type of store many wish would exist on their block.“The store is narrow, about ten feet across, with a central staircase leading to a mezzanine. There are books on both sides of the stairway, in ever more precarious piles, and it is a hardy customer who will pick her way carefully up the stairs to the dusty stacks beyond. Downstairs is a tumble of books that I sometimes surreptitiously straighten. There are sections labeled with old notices, but they flow into each other in an unstoppable tide, so that history is compromised by mythology leaking into it, mystery books get mixed up with religion, and the feminist section is continually outraged by the steady dribble of erotica from the shelves above. When books do manage to make it to shelves, instead of being in piles near their sections, they are shelved double deep and the attempts at alphabetization are sometimes noticeable, with “A”s and “Z”s serving as bookends to the jumble in the center.” p8Open from morning to midnight and staffed by an eccentric group of people, including two homeless men, the second hand bookstore is a wonderful setting. While it was center stage I read eagerly, delighted by the laconic owner, George and his enigmatic assistant Luke, content to imagine sitting behind the counter with a book in hand while a succession of customers wandered into the gloom.Esme is The Bookstore’s protagonist. A British PhD scholarship student at Columbia she falls pregnant to her boyfriend, Mitchell. They have been dating only a couple of months and she is worried what the pregnancy will mean to their relationship if she makes the decision to keep the baby. But before she can tell Mitchell (though it is obvious he suspects) he cruelly dumps her and Esme is left reeling. Choosing to have the baby anyway, Esme knows she will need some extra income so she applies for part time position advertised at the Owl.Sadly I found Esme less endearing as the story unfolded. The bright, articulate woman we are introduced to at the beginning of the story dissolves into the lovelorn victim of Mitchell’s shallow charms, oblivious to his self serving manipulations. The focus on the on again/off again relationship reduces Esme to a caricature rather than a character and I quickly grew tired of her inane interactions with Mitchell.Unfortunately there is not really any plot to speak of either aside from the anti-love story and the novel’s ending is ambiguous and unsatisfying. I realised, three quarters of the way through, I cared little about Esme and her pining for Mitchell and was simply waiting to revisit the Owl.That leaves me in a bit of a quandary, there were elements of this novel I liked, the Owl and its characters obviously and even the writing style, but the almost farcical relationship between Esme and Mitchell was an irritant and in the end I can’t say The Bookstore was any more than OK.

Book preview

The Bookstore - Deborah Meyler

CHAPTER ONE

I, Esme Garland, do not approve of mess. This is unfortunate, because ever since I woke up this morning I’ve had a feeling that I might be in one. I sip my tea, and wonder if I have forgotten to submit a paper, pay the rent, feed Stella’s cat. Nothing springs to mind. I reflect that as I can’t even name it, the likelihood of a genuine mess is remote. I carry on sipping my tea and I look out on Broadway beneath my window.

The buildings cut the sunlight so abruptly in New York that the shadows look like a child has made them with scissors and black paper. The sun floods the cross streets in the mornings and the east sides of all the avenues are in deep shadow. The sharp light is one of the things I love here. The sharp light, the sharp people.

I like waking up to the sun streaming in. When I arrived here, I had schooled myself to expect a first-year’s room—a freshman’s room, they would say—one that had a tiny window with a view of a fire escape. I opened the door of this apartment, back in August, and there was the sun, streaming, streaming. It’s a studio, which means it is one room with a bathroom. It’s a good word, though—it works. Makes you think that you are part of the fraternity of starving artists who have struggled in garrets for centuries. It’s right above a twenty-four-hour deli, so it’s not quiet, but—a view of Broadway, curving its way through the rigid grid of streets like a stream. It’s October now, and I still can’t get over it.

Irv Franks, in 14D, is lowering a basket down past my window. It has the usual shopping list and twenty-dollar bill pegged to the string. I check that one of the Koreans from the deli below is waiting for the basket. He is. He is smiling. Everyone, wherever they come from, knows that it is funny to replay village life in this way; everyone is pleased that it works.

I didn’t come to New York to escape the confines of my small town in England. I didn’t imagine that I could better express my personality in New York, nor that the city could rejuvenate my flagging spirits. My spirits rarely flag. I haven’t made the mistake, or achieved the hope, of thinking that New York might be my sanctuary or my redemption. Columbia University offered me a place to study art history, and threw in a scholarship for good measure. Nowhere else offered any money. Therefore I am in New York.

Things didn’t seem promising initially. I arrived like everyone else did, after swearing that I wasn’t a spy or guilty of moral turpitude, and that I hadn’t got any snails. In the first bewildering minutes outside JFK, on a Friday night in the rain, I stared out at veering yellow cabs, airport staff screaming abuse at cowboy operators, sleek limos nosing along the bedlam, the whole teetering on the brink of chaos. I thought, as so many people do, This is impossible. I won’t be able to manage this. But then, we do manage—we manage to get into the city at night without being murdered, and wake up the next day still alive, and shortly afterwards we are striding down Broadway in the sun.

I don’t have to go into college today. I am going to meet Mitchell for lunch, but first I am going to go to the Edward Hopper exhibition at the Whitney Museum. I am here to do a PhD in art history on Wayne Thiebaud, and I think Hopper is an influence on him. Thiebaud paints pictures of cakes. Or I should say, now that I am getting the hang of it, that he illustrates the demotic nature of America at the same time as achieving a fine poignancy and awakening a never-quite-fast-asleep nostalgia for the prelapsarian innocence of a younger America, whilst staying within a formal rigor in terms of composition. Anyway, the lollipops and the cakes and the gumball machines are great.

I step across the hall to Stella’s apartment, to give Earl, the cat, fresh water and food. He slinks around my legs while I sort it all out.

I am early; I can walk down Broadway for a while.

Outside Brunori’s market, there is watercress bedded in ice, great boxes of lush dark cherries, asparagus bound with violet bands. It is owned by Iranians, who have sounded out the mood of the Upper West Side, and given themselves an Italian history and flavor. I go inside. It smells at first of warm bread baked with raisins and cinnamon. If you move a couple of inches to the right, it smells of fresh coffee. If you go over to the produce aisle, it smells cold, of grass and earth. It is not a big store; it’s just that a lot is crammed in. I buy six apricots, yellow into orange into a flush of red, all downy perfection, imported from somewhere where it’s still summertime.

I consider breaking faith with my usual bagel shop for the new one that I reach first. There is a crush of people trying it out, which makes the decision easier. The staff will be new, the customers won’t know what they want, and I am not very good at waiting. I don’t know what to think about when I’m waiting.

I go past the dull underwear shop. How does it survive, even on this radiant street, when there are such delectable places to buy underwear all over New York? Perhaps not everybody wants delectable underwear.

I go into my usual bagel place. It is basic, with peeling linoleum. In the back, in a room without windows, the bakers are shirtless and sweating. Sometimes you can glimpse into the back, the bagels all in rows, all bathed in red light. I don’t know if it is the red light of fire. There are often two lines at the bagel shop, and when you get near the front, you can step up to the Perspex boxes on the counter and feel which are the warmest, and so the freshest. I ask for two sesame bagels. Then I order a coffee.

The coffee machine is broken, says the girl behind the counter. I nod understandingly, and hand her a ten-dollar note. As she is getting my change, the man who is looking after the other queue of people troops over to the machine and pours out a coffee for his customer. The girl serving me and I both watch this little operation, and then we look at each other for a second.

I think it’s working again, I say.

The girl says, "I said, the machine is broken."

We appear to be at an impasse. She is banking on my not making a fuss, being a foreigner, young, female.

I say, Can I see the manager?

She says, without turning her head to check, The machine is fixed. She gets me a coffee and when I pay for it, she suddenly grins at me. Have a nice day, she says. By the time I step back out onto Broadway, I feel I have undergone a rite of passage. Trial by bagel. Am I now a real New Yorker?

Across the street, squashed between a Staples and a Gap, is The Owl, the bookshop I love to visit. Copies of National Geographic spill out on the pavement in front of it like treasure, yellow spines gleaming, promising further riches within.

Perhaps because it seems so insignificant, The Owl manages to remain a ramshackle old bookshop. Staples and Gap, blinded by their own brightness, barely notice its existence, nor, it seems, does any other behemoth on the hunt for suitable premises. But it glitters away there, a dark jewel in a shining street. It is easily overlooked, but it is deep-rooted in the city, and I like to think it shares something of older and greater endeavors. One age might pass over what another prized, and the next age might then revere it. Museums and libraries are in place, of course, to keep past treasures safe through the neglect, but the museums and libraries have a flotilla of insignificant vessels that are just as vital. Secondhand bookshops are some of the tugs that can bring the bounty safely to harbor. The Owl is small, and it is definitely shabby, but it is tinged with lofty purpose.

Regularly inundated with more books than he knows what to do with, George, the laconic and gentle owner, often tips some out into the dollar-only shelves outside the shop, and occasionally, here can be found hidden wonders. I keep an eye out for old auction catalogs; sometimes it is the only chance you might get to see a painting you need to study before it passes beyond the doors of some moneyed collector. There was an exhibition catalog out here for Robert Motherwell’s Elegy to the Spanish Republic paintings, bound in the blue that he loved from the packets of Gauloise cigarettes—that milky blue shade on the spine was how I found it. Other people find even better things; maybe they are willing to look for longer. I was at the bookstore once when George was telling the story to those gathered around of finding a signed Robert Frost out here, the signature in spidery green ink across the flyleaf, clearly written in the frailty of age, but genuine too. He kept it for a while, the collector’s impulse vying with that of the salesman. In the end, the poetic sensibility won out over both; George was better off, in his measured opinion, reading the man’s poetry than gloating over his signature. Something there is, he said, slowly, but with his eyes alight, that does not love a signed first.

The name attracted me in the first place; it is not a name that seems calculated to bring in a torrent of custom, which immediately sets it apart from almost everything else in New York. The Owl. It doesn’t even have any sign to indicate that it is a bookshop; it could just as easily be a bar, or a pet store specializing in raptors.

I love to slip into the bookstore. It is my haven—I don’t have to prove myself there, as I do, endlessly, at Columbia. I can go to browse or go to listen. It is open until late, sometimes past midnight, and I usually go in the evening when I am too tired to do any more work. They have the books you want to be there; what would a secondhand bookshop be if it didn’t have the poets and the writers that you will one day (oh surely!) read—Milton and Tolstoy and Flaubert and Aquinas and Joyce—but also all sorts of off-the-wall catalogs and criticism?

There is the smell, too, of course—the reassuring smell of paper, new paper, soft old paper, recalling each person to the first time they really did press their nose into a book. But what I like best is the company—I like the people who work there, and the customers who come in at night to hang around and chat. George works there a lot, and less often, a guy about my age called David. On Sundays the person in charge is a woman called Mary; she brings her dog with her, Bridget, a huge German shepherd. I would have thought that the presence of a large Alsatian simply could not encourage custom, but the contrary seems to be true. People rush in to see Bridget, and sometimes buy a book by accident. In the evenings there is a night manager called Luke who often wears a bandana. He is broad of shoulder and taciturn in aspect—he looks to be around thirty. When Luke is at the front counter at night, without George there, he sometimes has a guitar with him, and sits playing bits of tunes to himself. He nods in acknowledgment whenever I come in, but I can never think of anything much to say to him. I like to crouch down on the cheap brown carpet and browse the art section when Luke is learning some tune or other. He can’t see me because of the Southeast Asia section, but I can hear him.

Now, I push open the door. On an ordinary day, coming in from the glare of sunlit Broadway, you will be able to see nothing at all, and you will stand there blinking, trying to adjust to the gloom. And gradually, you will notice that two eyes are fixed on you, and that these eyes, though apparently penetrating, belong to a stuffed owl that is nailed to a tree branch that juts out from a wall of books.

The store is narrow, about ten feet across, with a central staircase leading to a mezzanine. There are books on both sides of the stairway, in ever more precarious piles, and it is a hardy customer who will pick her way carefully up the stairs to the dusty stacks beyond. Downstairs is a tumble of books that I sometimes surreptitiously straighten. There are sections labeled with old notices, but they flow into each other in an unstoppable tide, so that history is compromised by mythology leaking into it, mystery books get mixed up with religion, and the feminist section is continually outraged by the steady dribble of erotica from the shelves above. When books do manage to make it to shelves, instead of being in piles near their sections, they are shelved double deep, and the attempts at alphabetization are sometimes noticeable, with As and Zs serving as bookends to the jumble in the center.

I would like to know how long the store has been here; it looks as if it predates most other stores on the Upper West Side. It always looks as if it has descended from its peak to a sort of comfortable scruffiness, as Venice does, and, as with Venice, it might be that there never was an immaculate peak, where gold was all burnished and wood did not rot, nor paint peel. The store has probably had this cockeyed, lovably crooked look since it first opened its little door onto Broadway.

This morning, George is already there, and so is Luke. George, tall and stooping, is wearing a homespun shirt and a knitted garment in olive green that might have started life as a cardigan. He has a green stone pendant on a black shoelace around his neck. I think he might have been at Woodstock in his youth. He has the abstracted air of an old-fashioned scholar—as if he’s pondering the great questions of Kierkegaard or Hegel, and has perpetually to wrench himself back into the quotidian world. He smiles in recognition when I come in, though I think he would be hard put to remember my name. Luke is up one of the ladders that run round the shop on a rail; he nods at me and says, Hey.

His ladder is blocking the art section, so I wait at the counter.

I keep meaning to ask how old the shop is, I say.

George is leafing through a book with tipped-in plates, making sure they are all there. He attends to one carefully before answering.

It’s been open for the browsing pleasure of New Yorkers for a fair number of years now. His speech, as always, is unhurried, and every sentence has a falling cadence. It is a restful voice.

"I thought it had been here for a while. It has that feel, doesn’t it?"

He considers. "Yes, I think it does. They say that Herman Melville bought A History of the Leviathan here—"

Really?

And Poe lived just three blocks north—if he came in here on a dark night, we could have been his inspiration for ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ . . .

This is incredible. I had no idea . . . I should have looked it up . . .

Uh-huh. Hemingway used to look in a lot. On his breaks back here from Paris. And Walt Whitman, when he got tired of Brooklyn. They even say that Henry Hudson looked in when he sailed his boat up the river. It wasn’t the Hudson then, of course, but I don’t recall the Indian name for it. He pauses, casting a glance around the book-filled walls, and then says, with a bland countenance, I would imagine he would have found something to interest him here.

Henry Hudson, I say, finally getting it. Okay. When did the store open?

Nineteen seventy-three, says George. He glances at me with his fugitive smile. We do get Pynchon in here from time to time.

I shake my head. You’re not getting me twice.

Oh, sure, says George, "believe Melville writes Moby-Dick because of this place, but not that Pynchon, who lives a few blocks away, would ever cross our threshold."

Yeah. That part is true, says Luke. He comes down from the ladder. So you stop by in the mornings too? He walks with a pile of books to the back of the shop.

Yes, sometimes, I say, to his retreating form. As he seems to think it is fine to ask a question and then walk away, I say to George, I’m on my way to see the Edward Hopper exhibition. He’s a big influence on Thiebaud—I’m working on Wayne Thiebaud, for my PhD.

Oh, that guy, says George, managing to dismiss the man, his art, and my doctorate in three syllables. I decide not to get into Thiebaud with George.

Have you always been a bookseller? I ask him instead.

He considers. It sometimes feels like it, he says. Certainly for most of my life. After college, I was a teacher. I taught English at a small but perfectly formed college called Truman State. It’s in Missouri. You won’t have heard of it.

I shake my head to show that he’s right.

Anyway, at a yard sale on a street in Kirksville, I came across a book by E. B. White. You’ve heard of E. B. White?

"Charlotte’s Web."

"Yes indeed, and the less well-known but equally rewarding Trumpet of the Swan. The book I found was called Here Is New York. If you read that book in your early twenties and you don’t want to move to New York, there’s something wrong with you."

Leaning past me, he selects a slender little hardcover book from the New York section and flicks to the last page. He’s talking about a tree, listen to this. ‘In a way it symbolizes the city: life under difficulties, growth against odds, sap-rise in the midst of concrete, and the steady reaching for the sun. Whenever I look at it nowadays, and feel the cold shadow of the planes, I think: This must be saved, this particular thing, this very tree. If it were to go, all would go—this city, this mischievous and marvelous monument which not to look upon would be like death.’

He twists a smile at me, half-wry, half-solemn.

Your bookstore is like his tree.

He nods as he closes the book, and looks up as another customer comes in. She makes a little shocked noise, so I look up where she is looking; she is staring at the owl nailed to its perch, and is backing away. As the backing away is theatrical rather than discreet, George obligingly asks if anything is wrong.

That owl, says the customer—a woman who looks like she subsists on a diet of wheatgrass and worry—is it—was it ever alive?

George considers the owl for just long enough to make me want to laugh.

Yes, ma’am, it was. But I don’t think you should worry—its nocturnal peregrinations are long since over. Could I perhaps cross the border of good manners and ask why you seem so concerned? Are you missing one?

She takes no notice. It is organic matter?

I believe it is.

"It must be carcinogenic. I mean, ohmigod, you’re breathing dead owl dust. I have to get out of here. I’m gonna call city hall—this is crazy. You need to get rid of that thing."

Ma’am, ma’am! says George, in a voice that stops her as she is halfway out. Please don’t let this get any further, but I see I will have to let you into our secret.

It is too tempting, despite the cancerous owl dust. She stops.

"It isn’t real, ma’am, we just like to pretend it is. We’re called The Owl, we wanted an owl for the store. But you are very right, that would constitute an environmental hazard. This looks like a real one, ma’am, but it is in fact a man-made artifact—in plain words, it’s plastic. And please don’t touch it, it’s a valuable piece."

She doesn’t look remotely like she wants to touch it. She comes back in fully, approaches the bird warily. I’d love it to suddenly squawk.

"They look like real feathers to me, she says. I think they’re hazardous also."

George says he isn’t qualified to say whether the feathers themselves offer a clear and present danger. Luke has come back to the front, and is standing on the first stair radiating contempt. George has lost interest in the game, and says, Ma’am, if you are so troubled by the bookstore owl, then, reluctant as I am to discourage patrons of secondhand bookstores, could I suggest that you might be happier at Barnes and Noble across the way, which, I am pretty sure I am safe in promising, you will find to be entirely owl-free?

When she has gone, George gets the next book in a pile and prices it. Then he stops, and looks up at Luke.

City hall. These people.

Tell me about it, Luke answers. George, I’m taking these books to the post office for Mr. Sevinç. There’s nothing else to mail?

Sadly, no, says George. For Sevinç? Those are the cartography books?

Luke glances down at the brown package. Yeah. The Vatican one is cool.

Isn’t it though? I would love to see those for real, says George.

He’s in town November, says Luke, looking impassive.

Ah, says George. They nod at each other very slightly. Mr. Sevinç is a customer of ours who lives much of the time in Istanbul, says George, in explanation, to me. When he visits The Owl, he brings gifts from the mystic East.

What does he bring? I ask. Maybe they just mean marijuana. But I am imagining silks, brocades, spices.

George must be able to see the pictures in my head. Oh, treasures, treasures, he says. He brings elixirs made by wizards when the world was young, cloth of gold woven in Byzantium, he brings cardamom and cloves and nutmegs, he brings parchments from the great Library of Constantinople, plucked from the flames by good men and true. Some things they managed to rescue from the barbarous hordes.

I nod.

By which, of course, I mean the Christians, he says. The Fourth Crusade?

I nod again. George is looking expectant. My knowledge of Crusaders is a little hazy; mostly I think of them as embroidered little men in St. George tunics. I begin to speak, hoping that inspiration or the memory of a history lesson will return, but Luke cuts in.

Halva, and Turkish Delight, says Luke. That’s what Sevinç brings. And it’s outstanding. George doesn’t eat refined sugars or saturated fats, but he makes an exception for Sevinç’s candy.

George spreads out his hands. Once a year, some halva—and halva has nutritional value—from the old souk in Istanbul. So sue me.

Good seeing you, Luke says to me on his way out.

I say to George, "The owl is real, isn’t it?"

Oh, yeah, he says, and grins. He cranes forward to check that Luke has not paused to tidy the outside books, and says, in a low voice laden with mirth, You seem to have made some sort of positive impression on Luke. He is rarely so loquacious.

I do not stay very long today; I am too restless to sink into that Zen state necessary for truly accomplished browsing. I still have this feeling that something is different, that there is something I have forgotten, that something is wrong. But it won’t come. I head for the park, to go to see the Hopper paintings.

Central Park is another place I can’t believe I see every day. I had thought that it would be as flat as a tabletop, and municipal, a large-scale version of an English park with swings and flower beds, neat and clipped and regulated and depressing. It is nothing like that at all. Today, there are cyclists and runners and tourists and inline skaters and skateboarders and people practicing ballet moves on a patch of grass, and police on horseback and a girl with a snake, and a woman with three cats on leads, and a motionless golden man on a plinth. It is the jubilant blazon of the city.

I feel better when I reach the gallery. The first gallery I went to in New York was the Met—like everyone else—and I saw a sign that said No strollers on the weekend so I zipped through all the rooms at breakneck speed, looking reprovingly at people if they seemed likely to loiter. When I reached the picture I most wanted to see—Garden at Vaucresson by Vuillard, whose exuberant joy you can feel even as you walk into the room—I barely stopped to look at it for fear of Met officials bearing down on me with a loudspeaker: Miss! No strolling! Step along there, miss. Look lively. It’s the weekend.

All of it is like that, at the beginning. Every conversation seems fraught with difficulty, every pronunciation produces a frown. I spend time learning how to use the transport system, learning how to speak so that people understand me, learning how to melt into the pot.

You can’t be slow. You can’t hesitate, you can’t ask questions with the usual polite packing around them—Excuse me, would it be all right if . . . ? Those are courtesies for a place where English is everyone’s first language. Here, it is the lingua franca, and it has to be boiled down to its simplest form. If you want to be understood, you can’t use irregular past participles. Has he left? results in blank stares. You have to say, Did he leave? You can’t ask for tuna in a deli and pronounce it chuna—because the men, with a big queue of people and no time, will hear the ch and make you a chicken sandwich. You can’t sound the t in quarter or butter, because quarter and butter don’t have any t in them here. You can’t even ask for a hot-water bottle—it is one of the first things I need, being a sovereign remedy for period pains, and nobody seems ever to have heard of them. A hot-water bottle? A what? No, we don’t sell them, miss. No, I don’t know where you could buy one. Eventually I corner a hapless assistant who has already denied the existence of hot-water bottles in America, and I explain exactly what I am looking for. It is flat, and made of rubber. You pour boiling water into it, and then fasten it with a stopper and slip it into your bed. It then warms up the bed.

"Oh, yeah. We sell those. You mean a water bottle."

Yes, that’s it! A hot-water bottle.

Yeah. Miss? They’re not hot.

Once I get to the Whitney, the aesthetics of which escape my grasp, I breathe more deeply and move more slowly. I spend a long time with the Hopper pictures. I like to look at how he paints light. Somehow he uses light to make everything still. I am glad I am going to focus on Thiebaud, though, and not Hopper. Mitchell has a Hopper on his bedroom wall—the one with the gas pumps that looks like it is an illustration for Gatsby. Everyone is lonely in Hopper, everyone is sad. Everyone is waiting.

Unless I leave now, I will be late for lunch. I hurry.

I am meeting Mitchell at a diner. He doesn’t take me to fancy restaurants, apart from the first night we met, and that was just for a drink. He loves discovering great hole-in-the-wall places. I don’t think he wants to be told where is good by Time Out or the New York Post; he wants to find it for himself. Or he wants to already know a great place, so that he can be irritated when Time Out finds it too.

I am still perplexed as to why Mitchell ever asked me out, ever even approached me. Mitchell is the kind of man you expect to see with someone who has that sort of easy sun-kissed I-just-stepped-out-of-my-Calvin-Klein-shoot look. I am not bad, but I am not in that league. Men don’t vault over things to get to me, or get tongue-tied in my beautiful presence. Most of the time, sad to say, they can’t shut up. He has a kind of confidence that I really like. I’ve never met anyone like him, with even a fraction of his easy assurance. I spend a lot of time trying to second-guess other people, and hoping that they like me; Mitchell doesn’t move through the world like that. He is like a sun; people react to him as if they are being warmed by the first spring sunshine. It is exhilarating to be with him, to be a satellite to that radiance.

On a more practical level, he tips waiters to get the best table, and it works. How do you know how to do that? How do you know how to give an amount that isn’t stingy or stupid, and won’t cause the waiter to stare down broadly at the note and say, "I’m sorry, sir, is this a bribe?"

He lives in an apartment on Sutton Place for free. It belongs to his Uncle Beeky. He really has an Uncle Beeky. Mitchell’s family also has a house on Long Island, at the seaside, but I think it’s empty most of the time.

His apartment looks like Edith Wharton has just vacated it. There are curtains made of lush brocade, sofas you sink into, fringed lamps, walls painted in heritage colors, books that are bound in fat shiny leather with raised bands, gilt mirrors, space to walk around. When I stay over, I curl my toes into the deep pile of the carpet and forget about my flat Ikea rugs. Mitchell doesn’t notice the apartment, doesn’t connect to it. There should be a person there who wants to stop and slip his hand over the curved oak banister, with its dull gleam, or pause at the sudden presence of a ghost, a spirit from an older New York, at home in the soft shadows. Mitchell would be better fitted to somewhere designed by Mies van der Rohe, somewhere with clean lines and clarity. Somewhere that doesn’t weigh down into the earth and into a thousand social precepts from long ago.

In a place he’s borrowing from Beeky, perhaps he can’t imprint his own personality too much. There are a few things that are his—the sheets, I would hope, are his rather than Beeky’s. They are a dark sinful mulberry color, but are redeemed by being made of the most beautiful cotton that has a sort of downy pile on it.

Mitchell is definitely tidy; his apartment is the most controlled space since NASA. This is, of course, very important indeed. I can’t imagine falling in love with a messy person. He is thirty-three, ten years older than I am, but it doesn’t feel as if there is any age difference. He teaches economics at the New School, but the nearest thing to a book in that apartment, aside from the leather ones that Edith and Henry left, are this year’s copies of the New Yorker in the bathroom. He says he has put them all in storage, that he has everything he needs on his laptop and his iPad, but I don’t agree. Loving my little bookshop, I don’t agree.

CHAPTER TWO

When I get to the diner, on 3rd and 28th, he is already there. It’s one of the many things I like about him; he’s never late. I see him through the window as I get there, and I stop for a second just to look at him. It is a curious thing, to feel so glad that someone else is in the world, to feel that it is almost a privilege to love them. That I should love a bright particular star. I would like to watch him for a few minutes without his knowing I am there, to take pleasure just in his being, rather than in his relation to me, but of course he looks up, and smiles at me. I come inside.

How are you, English girl? he says.

I’m feeling very English today, I say. "It’s such a beautiful day, and everything I have looked at today has seemed . . . strange and foreign. Not alien, but not English. Doesn’t it seem to you that everything is on display in New York, everything is spilling out—from the shops, from the cafés, from the people—and the result

Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1