Esme Garland is a
British 23 year old in Manhattan on a full-ride art history scholarship at Columbia when she meets the charming, handsome, irresistibly sexy Mitchell van
Leuven. In over her head, she is happily drowning in love (and lust!), when she
is sent abruptly to the surface and the real world. First, she discovers she is
pregnant, then, when steeling herself to tell Mitchell, he breaks up with her,
saying he finds their sex life too dull.
Upon coming to terms
with her situation, Esme sets out to put her new world on track – starting with
a job to supplement her scholarship. She finds employment at The Owl, a used
book store with an idiosyncratic staff and group of regular customers. They
take her in as well as taking her on as her pregnancy continues. And then
Mitchell returns…
The continuing story
gets better and broader in scope as Esme learns more about herself and what is
truly important to her and in life in general. The characters are well
developed and the story line ultimately evolves into a good, thought-provoking
reading experience.
I was not initially
engaged by either the story or Esme – I found her a bit disingenuous for a
seemingly bright graduate student at a prestigious university. Then I began to
reflect on being 23 and the relative sanity of some of my own non-academic
decisions. Book smarts don’t necessarily mean life smarts; experience and thought
take precedence there. That’s where Esme, and some of the supporting cast,
began to blossom and became more real and appealing as did the story line.
Great literature –
no; well worth reading – definitely; The Bookstore entertains as well as educates;
not a bad combination!
CAS
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