Culture Watch Book Reviews: The Bookman's Tale and Rebels at the Bar; The Fascinating, Forgotten Stories of America’s First Women Lawyers
In This Issue: The Bookman's Tale involves a blazing romance, a marriage followed by tragedy, a rare book mystery, and even a murder. If you like books, history, and mysteries involving old books, this is the story for you. I have read Rebels at the Bar with profound gratitude. Being reminded of the brave, intelligent, controversial women who broke through many barriers a good hundred years before the 1950's has been a fascinating experience.
THE BOOKMAN’S TALE; A Novel of Obsession
by Charlie Lovett
Published by Viking/Penguin Press, ©2013
Release date: May 28 or early June, depending on your bookseller
Reviewed by Julia Sneden
I need to begin this review with full disclosure of the fact that I know the author. Many years ago, he and my son were in the same class in junior high school, and his family lived a couple of blocks from me. Charlie has grown up to be an accomplished man, a bookseller who is an expert in the world of rare and/or antique books; he has also written several plays for young children, which have been produced all over the country.
Charlie Lovett’s latest effort, however, is most decidedly not a novel for children, involving as it does a blazing romance, a marriage followed by tragedy, a rare book mystery, and even a murder. If you like books, history, and mysteries involving old books, this is the story for you. But beyond the fun of the history and the mystery, the book is the story of a young man, Peter Byerly, an introverted and painfully shy person faced with the loss of his beloved young wife, who must learn to reach beyond his grief and re-enter a world turned upside down. It is rare to find, in the mystery genre, a hero so fully fleshed-out and accessibly human.
The Bookman’s Tale actually begins with a flashback dated February, 1995, with action set in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, a town that is famous for the sheer number of its bookstores. Peter, who is a dealer in rare and/or antique books, has come to Hay-on-Wye to browse, as a first step to re-establishing his career as a bookseller after the hiatus of mourning and withdrawal.
Peter actually lives in Kingham, an Oxfordsire town, in a cottage that he and his wife, Amanda, bought but never lived in. While the cottage was being renovated, they had returned to America, where Amanda suddenly died. After several wretched months during which Peter was withdrawn from the world, he has begun to find his way back, with psychiatric help, and has returned to England intending to re-start his career.
While browsing in the bookstore in Hay-On-Wye, Peter discovers a small, folded paper in an old book. When he unfolds it, a watercolor of his recently deceased wife’s face looks up at him – despite the fact that the painting is obviously Victorian, at least a hundred years old. Solving this conundrum is what drives the story of The Bookman’s Tale, and a rousing journey it is.
Hay-On-Wye Booksellers photographed as part of the Geograph project collection by Stephen Nunney, Wikipedia
The story jumps back and forth, each chapter headed with a place and date so that the reader who pays attention will be able to follow the carefully plotted, out-of-sequence story. Those of us who have learned to lean on such directional helps will appreciate the convention, since the story leaps to and fro from the late 1500’s to June, 1995 and several dates in between as the bits and pieces come together. Pay attention to those chapter headings!
The earliest-dated chapters are just plain fun to read, introducing us to characters both real and fictional. The author gives us a lively look at Elizabethan life and times, featuring characters both famous and unknown to us as they gather in a tavern called The George and Dragon.
It is through a chapter headed "Southwark, London, 1609," that we learn of Pandosto, a romance written by the dramatist Robert Greene, who, on his deathbed, gives the volume to a bookseller named Harbottle, with instructions to sell it, and to give the profit to his landlady to cover Greene’s debts. The bookseller, however, has other plans, and he pockets the book.
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