The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted

It is the late 1960s somewhere in country Victoria, Australia.

Farmer Tom Hope’s unreliable wife Trudy has just abandoned him on some sort of whim that he doesn’t understand. He soldiers on alone as best he can, making lists of things that perhaps he should have done, or done better, in order to keep her happy.

And then just as spontaneously sometime later Trudy returns to him. Although she’s pregnant to another man, the kind-hearted Tom takes her back. When little Peter is born, Tom discovers that he was meant to be a father and he and the lad become close.

All this is again thrown into jeopardy when Trudy becomes a born-again Christian and spirits little Peter away to a cult commune on Phillip Island. Tom is bereft until a Jewish woman, Hannah Babel, arrives in town, with an ambition to set up a bookshop.

Hannah is a survivor of Auschwitz and the subsequent refugee turmoils in Eastern Europe followed by the 1956 Hungarian uprising. But she keeps all of this to herself, especially the loss of her only son Michael to the gas chambers.

Although much older than him, Tom is drawn to Hannah’s exuberance and vivid personality and they are soon a couple. Meanwhile, Hannah sets up her bookshop and gives the local district much to gossip about, although in her heart she struggles with her past and the heartache of great loss.

More dramas follow involving little Peter and his mother, with further separations and angst (including a few murders) before all is finally resolved.

The narrative flows beautifully and makes for compulsive reading. Tom’s character is a delight, a man who is really too thoughtful and sentimental to be a farmer yet who sticks to the path he has chosen without giving up.

Peter is worldly beyond his years although his expeditions to try and be reunited with Tom do seem a little implausible for a lad of only six or seven.

Trudy is an unstable air-head, but Hannah is difficult to like in spite of everything she has endured. Eventually, her bookshop does succeed but there are gaps in her history that are glossed over, such as how she finds her way out of various near-death situations to return to Budapest unscathed, and where she gets so much money to buy her bookshop. Also, although one should have sympathy for her, her determination to pander to her grief without care of what it does to Tom means she can alienate the reader.

There are a few dark passages but there is also charm and comfort to be found in this book, especially in its descriptions of the ordinariness of country-town Australia and the goodwill of its people.

Four stars.


(Various covers on these sites)
 
Booktopia
 
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

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