Explorations Read-Aloud: “The Lost Bookshop” by Evie Woods

Every Friday, at 11:00 am, on the library’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page, the library will stream a brand new recording of local thespian, Joseph Coté reading aloud selections from a wide variety of fascinating and entertaining books of fiction and non-fiction.

For July 4, Coté will read aloud from the Evie Woods’ novel The Lost Bookshop.

Summary:  In first-person narratives, The Lost Bookshop alternates between the characters in two main story lines set in Dublin, London and Paris — one  beginning in the 1920s, the other in contemporary 2020. The two threads gradually converge for the reader in a satisfying dénouement.

In 1921, Opaline Carlisle is in London and is being pushed into an arranged marriage by her domineering mother and brother, Lyndon, a veteran officer wounded in the First World War.

An independently minded young woman who cherishes freedom and adventure, she flees to France, rather than agree to marry, and finds work at a bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, where she learns about the art of dealing in rare books and meets famous literary characters, including the novelists James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway.

Meanwhile, in contemporary Ireland, Martha flees to Dublin to escape her own troubled past, and finds work as a live-in housekeeper with an elderly lady, Madame Bowden.

Henry, a scholar, desperately in search of a possible unpublished second novel by Emily Brontë and for a lost bookshop, which play key roles in an academic study for which he’s received funding, also arrives in Dublin around this time.

By accidental fate or destiny he meets Martha while exploring next door at the site where he believes the lost bookshop should be located but mysteriously is not.

After being found and committed to Connacht District Lunatic Asylum at her brother’s behest, Opaline finally escapes and flees yet again to Dublin and sets up a bookshop there, still hiding from her brother under the assumed name, Miss Gray.

Having apparently disappeared from historical records makes it difficult for Henry and Martha to track her down as they try to piece together her story.

Although the characters themselves are oblivious to the links that connect them, slowly but surely the threads come together. With the aid of Opaline we discover that the lost bookshop has a benign will of its own as well as extraordinary magical powers.

Eventually the enigma of the lost bookshop is resolved.

Click the links to find the library’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page

Thoughts to share? Book ideas to suggest?
Contact Joseph at friday-explorations@usa.net