Robert Hillman (1) (1948–)

Beautifully written, but I was disappointed that the titular bookstore played only a very small role. We learned much more about sheep farming in the Australian outback than anything about the impact of a bookstore on such a community, including the protagonists. This is instead a story about recovery from trauma and disappointment (from Nazi concentration camps to childhood abuse to marital betrayal). Tom, the farmer, was the most credibly drawn character, with both strengths and foibles; Hannah was too neurotic for my taste, which was a disappointment as she was the one closest to the literature of the books, but seemed not to draw much insight or inspiration from them.… (altro)

This book is set in a rural town called Hometown in Australia in 1968. Tom Hope is a diligent and dutiful farmer, devastated when his wife Trudy leaves him only to return with her son Peter, a child from another man. She leaves both Tom and Peter but eventually returns once more to take Peter away leaving Tom heartbroken.

Into his life comes Hannah Babel, a Jewish woman who survived Auschwitz years before, but whose husband and son did not. Hannah - effervescent, slightly manic and irresistible, opens a bookshop in Hometown - something a novelty among the occupants who have never known such a thing and don't tend to read a lot.

Hannah and Tom fall in love, but their respective past heartbreaks are never far away. Will they be able to move on and find a way forward?

I really liked the story contained here and liked that the characters made mistakes and although as a reader I wanted happiness for both Tom and Hannah, I sometimes found myself frustrated with them (especially Hannah).

I do think there was something of a disconnect with the characters however - although I rooted for both of them, I never felt particularly connected to them; it was as if they were held at arms length by the author so that I was always on the outside looking in rather then ever feeling totally immersed in the story. That said, the flashbacks to Hannah's life in Auschwitz and her subsequent escape did resonate more and certainly explained Hannah's actions in the later timeline.

Overall, I liked the book and would read more by this author.… (altro)

Dutiful, reliable, bewildered by life, unsure what happiness is or whether he’s ever experienced it, that’s Tom Hope — until he meets Hannah Babel. Hometown, Australia, has never seen anything like her, and even in 1968, the changes sweeping the West seem to have skipped this rural, agrarian corner of Down Under.

Hannah, an effervescent Hungarian Holocaust survivor (a phrase probably seldom used, but it fits) plans to open a bookshop, of all things, and she hires Tom, a sheep rancher and orchardist, to do welding and carpentry to prepare for the opening. She’s utterly mercurial, older than he by fifteen years, speaks inflected English he can’t always fathom, and when she lets her canary, David, fly freely, the bird settles on Tom’s shoulder, further discomfiting him.

Hannah settles on him too, in a passionate rush that made me think, for a moment, that The Bookshop of the Brokenhearted derives from a male fantasy. But no; though their instant mutual attraction burns intensely, plenty of obstacles stand between them, least of which is that Tom has never read a book.

A few years before, Tom married Trudy, a psychologically unstable woman who has left him, twice, and scarred him so badly that happiness is “a fugitive,” to “be roused to confidence, encouraged,” but, if grasped too strongly, might “slip back into the shadows, forever.” (Trudy’s legacy continues in other ways, but I don’t want to reveal too much.)

Hannah has had two husbands, both dead, but she suffered her worst loss at Auschwitz, which stays with her, always. Metaphorically, that loss connects her to Trudy, something that neither Tom nor Hannah expected.

In lesser hands, a premise like this could easily turn sticky with treacle, melodrama, clichéd predictability, or a combination of these. Books, bookshops, and libraries are a hot thing in fiction these days, soon to be a trope, perhaps. Nevertheless, nothing happens here without second thoughts, reversals, mixed feelings, and a sense of dread, collectively the best tonic for treacle.

Hillman never loses sight of his characters’ age, maturity, or makeup, and his narrative takes no adolescent flights of fancy, relying on simple prose, grounded in the everyday, again staying in character.

Besides the treacle, it would be easy for a writer to adopt Hannah as a Jew of convenience, visible to a knowledgeable reader as unfamiliar with her own faith, which she’s also conveniently let slide. That’s a favorite device, as I've noted in other reviews. But Hillman knows his ground, rendering Hannah’s flashbacks with authority and depicting her Jewishness as well as the casual anti-Semitism of Tom’s neighbors.

But their reaction is an aside; Tom has never heard of Auschwitz and has the barest notions of the Holocaust, about which Hannah refuses to tell him. So it’s the hidden past that lies between them, not what the neighbors say, about which Tom wouldn’t care anyway.

Names matter in this novel, at times too obviously. Tom Hope? Check. Does Babel refer to the tower of, given Hannah’s multilingual, sometimes chaotic persona; or Isaac, the great Russian writer murdered by Stalin? No question where Pastor Bligh comes from, a vicious, self-righteous disciplinarian who lives up to his namesake, except that he’s incompetent at his job. I have no sympathy for fundamentalist Christian cultist lunatic sadists, and I suppose that's fair. Yet I want this man to have a three-dimensional rendering, and he doesn’t get one.

Even so, that’s the major glitch in The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted, a warm, satisfying, decidedly unsticky novel, which I highly recommend.… (altro)