Author: Evie Woods
The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods follows three interconnected characters, Opaline, Martha, and Henry, whose lives are shaped by a mysterious, vanishing bookshop in Dublin, Ireland. Interestingly, Opaline lives in the 1920s, and we follow her life story of independence and trying to break free from her controlling brother and an arranged marriage, which she does by becoming a rare book dealer. She first escapes to Paris, where she works in the iconic Shakespeare and Company bookshop, then, after her brother finds her, she ends up in Dublin, where she runs her own bookshop. Martha and Henry live in the present day. Henry is a PhD candidate looking for lost manuscripts and researching historical figures such as Opaline and her bookshop, trying to find evidence of the bookshop and that it existed, while Martha has recently escaped a domestic abuse situation with her husband and works in the house of a former actress as a housekeeper, while also considering going back to college.
The three stories unfold across time and gradually connect through an elusive bookshop, which seems to appear and disappear. Books are, in The Lost Bookshop, portrayed as an escape, identity, and transformation, or something that goes beyond reading and leisure; a meaning to life. There is also a feminist element in the book because both women are portrayed as strong, just in different ways, and both have been able to rebuild their lives after abuse. The book also tackles historical issues women faced, such as accusations of hysteria when complaining about things that are perfectly normal to complain about (e.g., being beaten up by an abusive father) and unfounded diagnoses of psychiatric conditions, which are made because of money men who wanted to lock these women up, paid. These things did happen in the past, and these stories are rarely told. Therefore, even though this history is distressful, it was remarkable that the author brought this part of history into popular writing, which can hopefully shed light on why we need the women’s movement and what feminists have historically done for women with their fight.
Self-discovery is also central to the book theme because characters take control of their lives, including Henry, and become main characters who control what they do and care for, e.g., Henry used to care only what others think about him, seeking academic recognition, but after interacting with Martha and further researching Opaline, he self-discovers himself and realizes that what he wants might not be what he thought it was. There is also magical realism in this book, with the bookshop disappearing and appearing, and functioning as a symbolic shelter for those who need it. The novel successfully blends literary history (e.g., Paris book culture of the 1920s, which I aim to read more about because this was touched upon in some other books I read recently, and appears to be fascinating), with a magical touch.
This is a bookish book, and written in a recognizable style of Evie Woods who has an experience of writing about various characters in parallel, such as in her amazing book The Story Collector, where we follow a story of two women: an Irish teenager living in Ireland in 1910 and an American Irish adult who travels to Boston after a breakup but ends up in Ireland, in 2010. I like this type of writing and have enjoyed this book too. Due to being a history buff, in the Story Collector as well as in the Lost Bookshop, I liked historical women’s stories more than contemporary ones, but both historical and contemporary stories are written well.
At first glance, The Lost Bookshop reads like a familiar bookish book about books, but beneath that surface lies a novel about belonging as structured, communicative, and reproduced through the transformative power of books that can provide people with comfort, but also ways of living. The bookshop functions as a field, first the Parisian one but then also the Irish one, and central to the book is cultural capital, which Opaline has due to her upbringing, Henry due to his education, but Martha acquires it through her work with Henry. Therefore, Opaline develops a habitus aligned with literary culture through immersion and practice but informed by her upbringing. Martha develops a habitus gradually through comfort and recalibration, while Henry possesses cultural legitimacy because his knowledge is credentialed, scholarly, and oriented towards institutional recognition. Thus, this novel has sociological value, and I immensely enjoyed reading this compelling book.
Thank you for reading!