Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A trail in a bookshop is the best kind of all. Hours and hours of losing yourself in a world of literary adventures. This is an ode to bookshops all over the world.
The Bookstore
What you need to know before your trail
Esme Garland has left her native UK to study at Columbia university in New York. She works part time at ‘The Owl’ a bookstore selling new and second hand books and the descriptions of life in a bookstore are simply wonderful and you will want to linger here…..anyway we digress, Esme falls in love with a lecturer – Mitchell – and falls pregnant. How are the next nine months going to pan out with Mitchell and those she meets in her beloved bookstore?
Travel Guide
Well New York is of course the setting but for us the real setting is the bookshop and there are many many stores in and around Manhattan that you can and should visit to get a real sense of the environment of the novel.
For a real tour of NY bookshops –
The Strand at 828 Broadway, (at 12th St) and Housing Works at 126 Crosby St, (between E Houston and Prince Sts) Both very different, quirky and full of books! There’s also a cafe and they’ve made this into a real place for sitting and browsing.
The sights of the city are lovingly seen and evoked through the eyes of Esme and as she passes by the posh shops of Fifth Avenue and the Park Avenue armoury where Esme bought books before she worked for Owl. Central Park and the Rockerfeller Centre feature and give the whole story a magical and very bookish environment. But it’s the world of bookshops that will enchant.
Streetview Maps
E) The Strand Bookstore
F) Barnes and Noble - perhaps the biggest bookshop in NYC
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
I enjoyed several things about this book, namely the numerous literary references and my discovery of The Owl Bookstore and its customers. How I pictured myself in The Owl Bookstore looking for the main character, Esme so I could go and say hi.
Esme is someone I identified with on many levels as she struggled to settle into living in New York. I was about Esme’s age when I moved to Toronto, Canada and the struggles that come with moving away from home really hit a chord with me. I also spent many a happy hour, lost in an old bookshop in New York on my frequent visits there so totally lost myself in these descriptions too.
The book has been described by some as Chick lit but although the central story is one about Esme, a young British woman who finds herself studying art history in New York and her emotional journey, the chick lit label may prevent some from reading it and that would be a real shame.
The Bookstore is a unique debut novel about a young woman who finds comfort and a home from home while working in a quirky used bookstore in Manhattan. Her boyfriend has just dumped her but not before she finds out that she is pregnant.
I loved the descriptions in The Bookstore, and felt like I was strolling around New York like I once had. the memories came flooding back and that definitely made the book come alive.
If you want to loose yourself in a Manhattan bookstore, then The Bookstore is an interesting find.
Where Next?
