{"id":2419,"date":"2019-01-07T08:06:03","date_gmt":"2019-01-07T15:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2419"},"modified":"2019-01-07T08:06:03","modified_gmt":"2019-01-07T15:06:03","slug":"a-book-for-those-who-love-books-bookshops-and-mysteries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2419","title":{"rendered":"A book for those who love books, bookshops and mysteries"},"content":{"rendered":"

I somehow misplaced this review when Bob Moyer submitted it last fall. He politely nudged me to find and post it. \u00a0And now I won’t rest until I have the book.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer<\/p>\n

THE BOOKSHOP OF YESTERDAYS. By Amy Meyerson. Park Row Books. 364 pages. $32.99.<\/p>\n

Some books are scary.<\/p>\n

Not Halloween or Stephen\u00a0King scary, not even Nicholas Sparks scary. Scary because just as you settle in with a satisfying cast of characters, a comfortable setting and a good narrative flow, a suspicion surfaces \u2014 will the premise behind all this hold up?\u00a0Will the resolution undermine this good feeling?\u00a0In other words, will the sum be as good as the parts?<\/p>\n

This book is one of those books. Miranda, who hasn\u2019t seen her uncle since she was a child, flies home to his funeral in L.A. She had received a copy of The Tempest\u00a0<\/em>and a card that says\u00a0Understanding prepares us for\u00a0the future\u00a0<\/em>just before she left. She associated it with the scavenger hunts her uncle set up for her to learn different lessons. After the funeral, she learns that he left her his bookstore \u2014 Prospero\u2019s Books. It\u2019s a pre-gentrification landmark in Silver Lake, just below Griffith Park. It\u2019s been there a long time, but apparently not much longer \u2014 it\u2019s saddled with debt. She decides to stay, to try to shore it up, to at least sell it. It\u2019s a place that makes any booklover feel at home, with books chosen to suit the owner, not the customer; with a manager who avoids hard financial questions; customers, including a retired doctor and a screenwriter, who hang out all day; and a tatted-up barista who has been there almost as long as she is old,<\/p>\n

At the same time, Miranda follows the clues her uncle has set up, a literary scavenger hunt that leads her through the works of writers including Hemingway, Austen and Erica Jong, as well as Shakespeare. Like the games he set up for her as a child, these clues are not just clever verbal ones. They are contextual clues that force her to examine the setting, the subject matter, engaging\u00a0her and the reader in figuring out just what her uncle wants her to find out \u2014 and her parents don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where the concern comes in. Can this question he keeps posing, that sends her across the Southern California countryside, have a big enough \u201creveal\u201d to justify the time and commitment Miranda and the reader put into the quest?<\/p>\n

The answer is yes. Besides being a bookstore-lover\u2019s delight, the book pays off with a nicely unwound mystery that keeps the reader engaged right up to the denouement. And that is?\u00a0 Well, you\u2019ll have to visit The Bookshop\u00a0<\/em>to find out. Don\u2019t expect anything but a grunt from the manager. And don\u2019t forget to tip the barista.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I somehow misplaced this review when Bob Moyer submitted it last fall. He politely nudged me to find and post it. \u00a0And now I won’t rest until I have the book. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer THE BOOKSHOP OF YESTERDAYS. By Amy Meyerson. Park Row Books. 364 pages. $32.99. Some books are scary. Not Halloween […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5,426],"tags":[1076,1077,184],"class_list":["post-2419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary-literary-fiction","category-mysteries","category-popular-fiction","tag-amy-meyerson","tag-bookshops","tag-mysteries-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2421,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419\/revisions\/2421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}