This is a literary fiction rom com with literary fiction MC problems that are too dark for an actual rom com and IOne run on line baby feeding review:
This is a literary fiction rom com with literary fiction MC problems that are too dark for an actual rom com and I absolutely never would have known this was the same writer who penned Euphoria which is sort of impressive on her part and disappointing for me because I loved Euphoria- there were certain passages I highlighted that stood out with that magic but it wasn’t the whole tapestry like in that book- relatable for a certain set of people I know, long past relatable for me (I have been married a decade and have never been attracted to these sorts of guys)- so meh!- I’ll probably hold on to a couple of quotes and forget the rest.
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour-Bookstore is a book with a perfectly charming premise This review originally appeared on my blog, Shoulda, Coulda Woulda Books.
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour-Bookstore is a book with a perfectly charming premise and a number of flaws. The premise, is, of course, what landed it on my to-read list nearly two years ago, and, I’d imagine, the list of many another bibliophile. The book centers on the new night-shift employee at a 24-Hour-Bookstore in San Francisco, who has taken the job after being laid off from his tech-start up in the Great Recession of the late aughts. He works from 10 pm to 6 am under the elderly, mysterious Mr. Penumbra and his even more mysterious clientele. For, while there is a (very idosyncratic and eccentrically chosen) bookstore at the front of his establishment (which only the occasional stripper from the club next door buys from), his real customers come for the good stuff in the back, which Clay (our protagonist) is told never to read. They appear at all hours of the day and night, borrowing books and returning them in fevers of excitement. And of course, like with any plot where there is a big red button one is very explicitly NOT to press, the day comes when Clay opens one of the books in the back. And then we begin the main plot, finding ourselves in the midst of a hundreds of years old cult of book-worshippers, secret puzzles and codes and a ragtag group of characters that stretches from your expected conservative cult leaders to modern-day tech CEOs and programmers, all thrown together by the draw of solving a puzzle.
It sounds like a premise that should work- it really is a new twist on the literary cult mystery, trying to see what it might mean for a generation with new ideas and new technology. Sloan definitely creates a true-to-life feeling about how many younger people would process finding something like this in their life: way that many characters treat this as a Saturday-night trivia exercise rather than the serious undertaking any other book would present it as (the part where they are on the major, dramatic bit of their “quest” and the two characters with actual jobs/lives are taking meetings, going to work and obsessed with stuff on their phones and only keeping half an eye on the main mystery felt really true). I also liked how Sloan really stared pretty unflinchingly in the face of the idea that computers can do decades of human work in minutes or hours and hinted at some of the different kinds of knowledge that that offers- is it “cheating”? She definitely refused to indulge in a great part of the romanticism that a lot of us book-lovers cherish for our favorite hobby. I also appreciated that the main female character was allowed, at least a few crucial points, to not conform to being just a wish-fulfillment for the main character.
But unfortunately, that’s about it for the positives. None of which has anything to do with the most important parts of a book. All of which I felt this book failed at or at the very least did a very lackluster job of showing. Let’s start with the plot, which I never found in the least suspenseful. The main character finds a problem and solves a problem within pages-usually not even by virtue of his own ingenuity (he even admits this towards the end of the book, that everything gets solved because he brings the problem to someone else). Even as the plot ramped up towards the end, there was never any mad dash or suspense- we’re flying quite comfortably on Jet Blue, thank you, and able to go about our normal lives for 3/4 of the time we’re on this “adventure” (both other main characters use vacation days and branch offices in order to go on the journey- it’s a pretty disappointingly responsible and middle-manager way to go on a quest). There’s no sense anyone is ever really in danger (ooooh no, what if the book nerds discover you’re in their secret library during unapproved hours??? I wonder if he will be able to escape the grasping arms of octogenarians who have spent their whole lives underground bent over large books???)- the greatest danger is the occasional fear of embarrassment. And, and this is something of a spoiler, but honestly you won’t be surprised by the time you get there…. the climax is told by means of a powerpoint slideshow. I don’t know if there’s a more depressing way for an author to try to indicate triumph. And let’s not even get started about the fact that a solid 100 pages of this read like an advertisement for how great it is to work at Google.
I also found myself reading this book from a great distance. It’s told in the first-person, and the book we’re holding is supposedly written by the narrator. However, despite deploying these multiple ways of hooking your reader into a personal relationship the main character, I still found myself outside the book . I never felt that moment of “I feel you, bro,” or found myself sympathizing for his struggles. Perhaps because the man himself never really let me see him beyond the surface- he told me about wanting to punch guys his girlfriend spent time with, or feeling surreal about some of the things he’s noticing, “Like, OMG, isn’t this so weird,” and being too much of a sissy to open the books he’s not supposed to open (though he takes credit for it later), but that's all I got. I think this also was at least in part due to an odd, seemingly minor, choice the author made to have the narrator's thoughts written indistinguishably from the general description and narration of plot, without italics or some other thought tag. This meant that I would often read his thoughts without the feeling they were supposed to be read with. I did occasionally like Kat, especially towards the end of the novel when Sloan really emphasized how much of her own person she is, rather than a function of the book’s technology vs. books narrative. But Neel’s whole thing (and his virtual boobs company) felt like a weird, absurdist element thrown in to make the book feel more postmodern. He belonged in some other book by Franzen or Wallace, but he definitely didn’t belong here. And Sloan really half-assed the mysterious, ancient appeal of Penumbra and the whole cult- she made them dusty shams past their prime whose ancient rites and rituals were easily taken apart by technology.
Which, I suppose, would probably be true of a lot of organizations like this (especially if they are technophobic and don’t change with the times-lookin’ at you, DaVinci Code). But then… what’s the point of this book? I don’t get it. Was centuries of work and dedication really there for an unemployed dude in his late-twenties who needed a self-esteem boost? That makes me want to side with the grumpy old cult members who are pissed that you took the meaning out of their hobby. I really thought, actually, after all the hints it gave us, that the book was going to go with “it’s all about the journey, not the destination” at the end and I was prepared to accept that as part of a growing-up shift in priorities for our hero, and when it went with what it did instead in the end, I didn’t even know what to do with it. Because you’re trying to tell me this is a book about friendship instead? And how valuable it is? Really? But you spent this book having your main character use his friends and manipulate them into doing what they wanted, so… how does that make sense? The examples of older friends in this book appear delusional and out of touch with each other, willing to use their friendship to try and twist minds and hearts. And don’t even get me started on how you stuck Kat on as a pretty bow on the end, when the entire book had made the case that that would be a horrible idea for everyone involved. Even the whole effort to “save” Mr. Penumbra didn’t feel real- I never understood why this guy was so motivated to help him, given that they had barely any interactions, he judged him constantly and he had known him for less than a few months. The work to establish the relationship, or at least the allure, of Mr. Penumbra, was never done.
I can’t even process this as a deconstruction of all of those literary conspiracy, secret society type books out there, because if your only point is “well technology would destroy that in a second,” then you are missing the point of that entire genre by dismissing it with a surface clever observation better suited to a New Yorker Shouts and Murmurs column than a serious book length treatment. I also don’t really think satire was the point in the end- too many pieces of the puzzle were left intact- because they were ineffectively drawn to begin with. So I guess… in the end I don’t really understand what this book was for. Who was it supposed to appeal to? You’ve annoyed bibliophiles, you’ve alienated a lot of readers over thirty, never mind serious readers of fiction and character studies who like to attach to your characters… and I don’t understand why.
Why are you ruining the fun without having something useful to say about why you’re doing it? I guess that’s what I’m asking. I left this book still not understanding. If you’re aiming for anything like satire of or comment on a genre and still expect the target audience to buy it, you better tease with love and understanding and be so devastatingly accurate there’s nothing they can do about it, and then you had better let them know that you get them and you’re one of them at the end. (Please see Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell for reference on how to do this in beyond brilliant fashion.)
And all you had was a powerpoint slideshow at the end?
I’m sorry to all you neglected books who deserve to be pulled out of eternal middle-of-the-pile land, but this book was not one of you....more
Not your fault, Penelope. Just read one too many repressed-English-lady-in-a-closed-society stories in a row I think. Instead of the connection and reNot your fault, Penelope. Just read one too many repressed-English-lady-in-a-closed-society stories in a row I think. Instead of the connection and recognition I typically feel, I came out the other side of predicting the words you were going to say with the face of the enemies that you spend much of the book fighting. Which means I need a break from you lovely ladies- as overidentified with you as I am- even I can need, like Charlotte, a little more air to breathe and I can't appreciate going on one more 200-300 page journey to get a tiny piece of it like I typically do. I'll be back when I haven't just read about ten-fifteen of your sisters all in a row. I'll bet it will be a relief to be back among you when I do, but not just now. ...more
I would like to say before I begin this review that I am a liar. Those five stars above are in many ways undeserved. They are certainly not given for I would like to say before I begin this review that I am a liar. Those five stars above are in many ways undeserved. They are certainly not given for any objective literary merit. They are not given for superior plotting (darlings, you thought I was that blind?) or suspense, for consistently admirable positions- whether political or otherwise (there is a reason that all the blurbs on the back of this book are taken from French newspapers that are standard bearers for the political right), for a cast of characters so lovable or love-to-hateable that one is irresistibly attached to them (no, they were something quite different), nor are they for Lolita prose so sublime as to render all other objections irrelevant (some copy editor at Europa was definitely drunk doing this one, and Cosse can get rather… well, French at times.) I’ll even admit that the first time I almost bought this, after Elizabeth posted her excellent review, I passed on it because I thought the first pages of another Europa release, The Most Beautiful Book in the World were better.
But when I finished this, I gave it five stars. I was going to change it after I got some distance from the book, but I decided against it. Why? Because of something Orhan Pamuk once wrote:
"Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head."
I’ve always loved this quote. I’ve always felt like this was something that I believed, as a book lover. I’ve had it written down for ages, and I look at it from time to time, satisfied that I’ve approved of something that sounds like the person I want to be. Cosse, though. In A Novel Bookstore she brings that quote to life, and shows me why I actually wrote it down, what I recognized about it. It was good news (or deeply unfortunate news, if you’re a rational person) for me- I’m a book person. I’m not just a girl with a lot of books trying to seem smart, escape the world, or keep up with the cool kids. I’m not a fraud! I recognized so much of myself: When Van and Francesca go to the police and it becomes clear that they can only relate the backstory they are about to tell the investigator as a fiction narrative, I smiled. When someone is caught for the first time lost in a book at a bookstore that they cannot pay for but have overcome their scruples to finish…well, because they couldn’t help it, I grinned. When our two protagonists start to make lists of their favorite books- oh, oh! That was the best! I loved it! When they call each other in the middle of the night because it is so terribly important that someone not be left out, when 300 novels each is too few to name all the good ones, when it devolves into prioritizing and itemizing and being willing and able to wade into complicated mathematical algorithms in order to create a literary paradise… that’s when I hugged it to my chest and laughed. It seemed like everyone’s reason for using goodreads- a brick-and-mortar, old-fashioned French version of it, in any case.
Whenever the plot veered off course and into the lands of political posturing and cloak-and-dagger conspiracies, Cossé would interrupt herself and remind us that talking about the books was what mattered. Ivan or Oscar or Francesca would stop the plot and talk about the book they read last night, which would lead to someone else doing the same, and then a scene where a man comes in breathless, sleepless with exhaustion and simply must have the rest of the love letters that author X wrote to his mistress right this very minute. The plot, the world, their lives changed, paused, took a different course because of the books, even if their lives went back to their original path later. It was an interesting counterpoint to the other reason she interrupted the flow of prose (which she did in the same way, interestingly)- to remind readers that other “big” news events are happening outside the narrative. At first, I thought she was a) doing herself a disservice because, well, that’s true and in comparison to genocide who cares? or b) annoying me and contradicting her own point in the book by talking to whatever critics were going to read this book and preempting criticism that she doesn’t look outside of her elite world. But then I decided I liked it- it’s illustrative of how tiny the world can be for a person who inhabits books. Miniscule. But it just can't get any bigger, unless it is forced to. I used to walk down streets reading a book. I still read books on the machines at the gym- and the only time that didn't work for me was when a nosy lady pushed her face next to mine and asked, “God, don’t you want some time for yourself?”- and the subway, and restaurants when waiting for someone, and at home. I nearly always prioritize finishing a good book over anything else I have to do- to my own detriment on many an occasion. (It is perhaps lucky that I don’t happen upon too many good books, or I’d probably have been fired many times over before this.)
This book is my answer to everyone who ever asked me if I wouldn’t rather go out to a club, or how I can carry that big book to work every day, or who yelled at me for not watching where I’m going. I am sorry, everyone. I really am! I’m going to start handing these books out as apologies for the times when I miss what you’re saying because I’m finishing a chapter, or when I’m 20 minutes late for dinner because I couldn’t catch my breath long enough to stop reading. Cosse celebrates this kind of reading. I love this book for many of the same reasons I loved Orlando. She understands and celebrates, and shines a kindly, soft light on people and a culture that can be cruel, selfish, childish, escapist, all of it. She admits it, but she tries to reach for all the complexity of it. Now, she is in no way as brilliant at this as Woolf was, neither in perception nor in writing, but I can see her intention, and there are moments… well, I explained those already. How do you not love a book that says it is for, “those of us who doubt everything, who cry over the least little thing, who are startled by the slightest noise,” and is about advocating for, “necessary books, books we can read a day after a funeral, when we have no tears left from our crying, when we can hardly stand for the pain; books that will be there like loved ones when we have tidied a dead child’s room and copied out her secret notes to have them with us, always and breathed in her clothes hanging from her wardrobe a thousand times, and there is nothing left to do.” It wasn’t only the Good Novel that I wanted to hang out in, I wanted to hang out with Cosse’s wonderfully structured understanding of the people who populated it. I want a whole book of stories that focus on each of the people who came to read there late at night and why, I want to follow them back out the door again. But Cosse didn’t show me that- because that isn’t the point. We saw what anyone else would see of someone who has obsessed about a book all night and can’t quite believe it is over- bleary eyes, unshaven faces, inability to exchange real, out-loud words from between dry lips.
I liked that- I didn’t want to know. I shouldn’t know. Cosse is wonderful about the things that you shouldn’t know. I loved her writing for that, too. She doesn’t only do this with the inner literary lives of her characters, but also with their emotional interactions with others. Francesca is a case in point here- we end up knowing what is going on with her, some of it. What the lady chooses to tell us. But beyond that, well, not only is it none of your goddamn business, but why would you want to know something that could only ruin a character? Could only ruin a narrative? Why is it important that every mystery is solved? Cossé uses Francesca as the poster-girl for a certain kind of argument about concealing not revealing with sexuality and attraction, but I thought the point was valid and relevant beyond that. She does the same thing with Anis, in a way. I loved how Cosse was able to show the shifting of inner barriers from thick walls to diaphanous floating silk. She created fragile moments that I winced to read where each of them exposed themselves and got smacked down. Either by themselves or by the undeserving man they showed a weakness to. I think she’s right about that overwhelming moment where feelings leap to your lips and the immediate damage control you have to go into afterwards- that is, if you’re a woman like this. I know a lot of women like this. What happened was unfair to both characters- I didn’t like the reveal about why they were the way they were- but I liked the depiction of the way they were. I was able to the way that they withdrew, no matter how many times they wanted to move forward. I think Cosse was able to capture a truth here (before she got over it at the end), about relationships vs. self protection, or perhaps about the importance of the Self over Only Connect, or about how much we discount the accumulation of time- what honesty of emotion we’re missing in an instant connection world. That could be about books too, I suppose. It probably is, too- in this novel one has to assume that. Was this an old French conservative railing about Them Kids with their hair, and their music and especially their Twitter? No. No. … A little bit. But it was also about how “a sincere girl can both look at a man tenderly and be unable to do anything but withdraw,” and how a man is “filled with joy at the thought that he had never been gratified with the sort of little meaningless kiss that merely proves in plain language that such effusiveness will go no further,” and includes a story about Karen Blixen that is “one of the most desperate things” our narrator has ever heard: “When she married Bror Blixen, loving him no more than he loved her, she made him agree to leave Denmark, where neither of them had any real reasons to remain, and she said to him.. ‘At least we’ll have done that, we’ll have gone away.” There are better, more nuanced things that characters feel and do than what happens to them at the end. Cosse should get absolute credit for that.
I don’t know what to say. I spent too much time thinking about book lists, about why Francesca would have liked Cormac McCarthy, about letter-writing and Anis’ short-story collections, about reading too “nationally”, about whatever charming thing angelic Oscar was saying, to care about whatever political argument she was having with Le Monde on the side. I got lost in my own little world, just like the characters. Perhaps you can fault me for that. Perhaps Cosse was counting on that reaction to a certain extent. What can I say? Touché, madame. You win.
If at this point you are now inclined to read this book, I would only remind you that even though I thought some things were worth five stars, it was hardly all on that level. If you still read it and don't like it, well: [image] ...more
Well, he namechecks at least four things I love in the title. I'm interested. Even if one thing gives me the ickies.Well, he namechecks at least four things I love in the title. I'm interested. Even if one thing gives me the ickies....more
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