Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Book Note: The Bookshop of Yesterdays

Meyerson, Amy. The Bookshop of Yesterdays. New York: Park Row, 2019.

I found The Bookshop of Yesterdays while searching for anything Shakespeare-related that I could load from my library onto a Kindle to dip into easily. 

Its plot involves a woman named Miranda Brooks (so we see the connection to The Tempest right away) who receives a mysterious package from her estranged uncle. Almost immediately after, she learns that he has died (that's a spoiler, but it happens in chapter two). Eventually, she traces the train of clues he leaves her back to Prospero Books (Miranda Brooks and Prospero Books, see?), the bookstore her uncle ran and she loved to go to as a child.

I'll avoid any other spoilers, but I will say that my clarion cry applies to this book: "Needs More Shakespeare!"

Apart from that, it's not terrible. And it has something to say about the relationship between Prospero and Miranda in The Tempest and Prospero Books (and its owner) and Miranda Brooks in this novel.

Let me share the opening of the mystery; you can determine whether you wish to read on.





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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

—The Tempest