Village Books by Craig McLay - Told from the point of view of the book store's assistant manager, this reads almost like a memoir, and to me the plot seemed secondary to the characterizations. We never find out the name of the narrator, but he is a young man who had hopes of being a writer but is instead toiling at a retail job in a non-chain bookshop and dealing with all the strange personalities of the other employees. The manager, Dante, is obsessed with avoiding the dates his controlling mother sets up for him because his preferences go the other way. Sebastian, the narrator's best friend, is obsessed with hooking up with as many women as possible and living a generally debauched life. Other employees include the wannabe philosopher Aldous, who doesn't quite understand personal hygiene and presentation; Ebenezer, the crusty yet gentlemanly former English teacher; Mina, who has been cheating on her crazy husband and may not be mentally stable herself; and other strange characters.
Leah is hired as a new assistant manager, and very shortly she and the narrator are involved in a passionate relationship that challenges the narrator's insecurities. Various small subplots involving this relationship and the relationships and activities of the bookshop employees dominate the narrative until well into the book, making me wonder if there was going to be an actual plot point of an overarching problem or crisis that drove the entire story, or whether it would be a collection of little events as the main relationship developed. The crisis finally did present when the narrator learns that the heiress to the bookshop is almost ready to close the deal selling it to a large corporation, and she does this while her mother is in a coma. At that point all the characters must look at their future if the sale goes through and they are no longer employed, and whether they can fight the sale or stop it.
I didn't really love any of the characters, and while I was somewhat sympathetic to the narrator by virtue of the fact that he is the storyteller, I didn't find him very relatable. I liked Aldous and Ebenezer better than the narrator, I think. The lack of a clear plot for the first half of the book was off-putting, and although the interactions between all these strange characters were humorous, they were also just unpleasant and immature characters overall. A fair amount of the dialogue and narration relied on sexual jokes and references that I found crass and distasteful. Again - immature. The narrator and Leah did grow up in their relationship and show some character arc, but it was too little too late for me. I don't imagine I'd be in the target audience for the novel, and I admit part of my disappointment lies in the fact that my expectations based on the title and cover were rather different than what the author delivered. Not bad writing, not a bad book, but not what I expected and not my cup of tea.
From the publisher:
Village Books is a local institution . . . which is good, because most of the staff probably belong in one.
There's the manager, Dante Andolini, who's hiding more than just his hypochondria from his overbearing mother . . . Sebastian Donleavy, whose hedonistic lifestyle is two rails short of being on the rails . . . Aldous Swinghammer, whose philosophical eccentricities have not been the biggest hit with the ladies . . . Ebenezer Chipping, whose crotchety exterior hides a burning passion for the Spanish émigré next door . . . Mina Bovary, whose crazy husband may have just gone AWOL with an arsenal of fragmentary explosive devices . . . and the store's long-suffering assistant manager, who is spinning his wheels in retail while he waits for something better to come along.
That something better may be new assistant manager Leah Dashwood, an aspiring actress with an ambitious plan to transform the store and its staff in a way that will turn their carefully disordered worlds on its head. Will the store survive? Will it be bought over by its evil corporate competition? All questions will be answered (but not necessarily in that order) in this hilarious debut novel.
This is a stream of consciousness narrative (#40) for The 52 Book Club's 2025 Reading Challenge.
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This is third in The 52 Book Club's Connections Challenge. It is set in the country where the previous author was born, Canada.
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by Rodman Philbrick - reading along with students in my Creative Writing class!
by Anna Lee Huber - Kiera and Gage investigate the murders of young heirs in London that are meant to look like the work of resurrectionists. (Read my full review 
