Review by Booklist Review
Widowed Sophie Bernstein has owned her DC bookstore for years when she discovers an architectural anomaly behind the Graham Greenes, a 350 square-foot room she wants to convert into a nook where she can escape the store and her shaken sense of the world after the riots in Charlottesville, Virginia. Meanwhile, her staff members are dealing with their own troubles, especially events manager Clemi, who kissed coworker Noah. She isn't looking for a relationship, but somehow she ended up adopting a tortoise with him. A scheduled visit from a controversial poet is causing protests outside the store, everyone is clamoring for a self-published book about varieties of Doodle dogs, and the vacuum is acting up again. Coll (The Stager, 2014) ably juggles chaotic details, turning them into hilarious running gags while making it completely clear why Sophie wants to bury herself in the nook--though she can't, because the power went out. While this is full of nods to the publishing world that those in the know will appreciate, every reader who loves books will relish Coll's comedy of errors.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
PEN/Faulkner Foundation president Coll's latest novel (after The Stager) is set in the immediate aftermath of the infamous 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA, in which a counter-protester was killed. Readers meet the multigenerational staff at an independent Washington, DC, bookstore as they navigate personal and professional dilemmas. The bookstore's owner, Sophie Bernstein, has just been widowed; the loss, in combination with the country's political turmoil, is causing her to have a break with reality. Overworked and underappreciated events manager Clemi is an aspiring writer who's struggling to find her footing in life. Throw in a busy and understaffed store, several controversial author events, pets running amok, and an impending solar eclipse, and you have a story where dark and comedic plot lines converge. VERDICT Coll's novel is a lot more serious than its cover communicates; it explores thorny issues such as the rise of neo-Nazism, career burnout, and the question of separating art from artist. Fans of novels with plenty of literary and political references or of relationship fiction will enjoy.--Migdalia Jimenez
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The wacky world of books and the people who love them, as seen through a week in the life of a Washington, D.C., bookstore. Recently widowed bookstore owner Sophie Bernstein, 54, is trying to find her footing after the death of her beloved husband and the other disorienting events of 2017 (Charlottesville looms large), but it's not easy. For one thing, almost all the people in her life are her employees and are much younger than her. Comic novelist Coll, herself a longtime bookstore events manager, brackets this winsome midlife picaresque by placing Sophie at two young people's parties. At the opener, the youth have gathered to guzzle some vile but dangerously potent liquor (they chant "Mis…ses…Bern…stein" to get her to take a swig); at the close, they suck down Penumbra Punch at a rooftop solar eclipse party. Along the way, Sophie faces extreme drama of all kinds, from the threat of a protest over the visit of a rapacious British poet blamed for his wife's suicide to having her car towed because her keys have been sucked up by her vacuum cleaner, the fearsome Querk III. Her other vacuum cleaner, a Roomba, is the closest thing she has to a new boyfriend. Meanwhile, the book jokes don't stop coming. The fiction debut of a 25-year-old Parisian-born Afghani Irish woman titled The Girl in Gauzy Blue--of course they can't keep it in stock. A book called The Uncommon Quayle--speculative fiction featuring Vice President Dan Quayle as an undercover narcotics agent--not so much. And literally everyone Sophie meets, including a lawyer threatening suit, wants her input on a book idea. A smelly but prescient tortoise named Kurt Vonnegut Jr. recalls the rabbit of Coll's hilarious previous novel, The Stager (2014). Certain plotlines, such as one about Sophie building out a secret room in the bookstore so she will never have to go home to an empty house, don't seem to go anywhere, but, well, who wants to go anywhere? As much fun as Coll has with vacuum cleaners--a truly surprising amount--it's literary humor where she slays. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
