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lobelia321In Spanish: La Librería del Señor Livingstone (The Bookshop of Mr Livingstone)
Two stars for content, one star for format.
Let's start with the content. I was charmed by the first fifty pages. This is fine world-building: a kind of alternate London that is actually the fantasy London of a non-Briton. It is a little bit how I thought of England before I moved here many years ago. Gutiérrez who is Spanish stands in for all the continental Europeans (and perhaps others), and particularly for those whose mother tongue is not English, and who dream up a tourist destination of five o'clock teas, drizzly cobble stones and eccentric gentlemen who quote Lewis Carroll.
Then, after the first fifty pages, this world started to gall.
Brief plot (seeing that most other reviews are not in English as the book has not been translated): A young archaeologist, Agnes, arrives in London, hoping to find work as an archaeologist. She gets a temporary job in Mr Livingstone's bookstore. Mr L is a curmudgeonly but kindly book lover who wears three-piece suits with a fob watch. Also part of his bookstore community are: an eight-year-old boy who loves astronomy and is parked there by his mother in lieu of babysitting; Mr L's girlfriend, the publisher Sioban; the 'writer in residence' who uses the bookstore as a study; John Lockwood of Scotland Yard who falls in love with Agnes; Jasmine, Agnes' Black flatmate and friend; R. Cadwallader the pub cook who falls in love with Jasmine, and a côterie of customers who enter the shop with clueless requests. Everybody quotes books a lot, particularly Shakespeare and a medley of others (it was rather amusing to spot all the sources; I got nearly all of them.) "A feel-good novel", proclaims Que Leer on the back cover.
I read the excellent German translation by Petra Zickmann of the Spanish original book. The English quotes below are my own translations from the German translation.
What galled:
The title's eponymous Mr Livingstone is an heir of the original Stanley Livingstone who traipsed through parts of Africa. This Victorian Livingstone is part of a highly problematic project: British Imperialism and colonialism, European racism. This book blithely ignores this. Note: the book was first published in 2017, and in a country that was itself a European coloniser so ignorance cannot be pled. Africa is the 'exotic contintent' (p.86). The 8-year-old boy bemoans the loss of mystery:
"Like back then, when the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Mr Livingstone mapped out the Kalahari desert, navigated down the Zambezi river and named the waterfalls after Queen Victoria. After that there was nothing left to research or to discover." (p.171)
What to say.
The next problematic point concerns the Elgin marbles. The het couple spend a romantic evening among them in the British Museum. The book does acknowledge the controversy surrounding them, namely, that Greece wants them returned. The archaeologist says she does not know if they should be returned:
"I don't know. Many other Egyptian pieces are also affected. If the British and French archaeologists had not taken their finds home back then, hardly anything would now be left of this valuable cultural heritage. Most of it would have fallen prey to grave robbers, ended up on the black market in antiques, been destroyed by acts of terror or wars or have disappeared, thanks to the monstrous corruption of the regimes in Cairo. Those were wild times, and in the nineteenth century, Europe was a relatively safe place for these treasures." (p.230)
Oh dear. Greece and, in an elegant sleight of hand, Egypt as corrupt, riddled with terrorists, black marketeers and grave robbers, prone to war, with Europe as the saviour? Who bought those objects on the black market, I wonder? Well, I don't need to wonder, I know it from art history (side note: I am an art historian): Europeans. And there is no mention of the museum that Athens has specially built, with all the mod cons, to house the Parthenon marbles next to the Parthenon. Instead, more obfuscatory ideological self-justification:
"Relics ... belong to all of humanity and because of this, because of their universal character, we should not care in which country or in which museum they are exhibited." (p.230)
if it doesn't matter where they are, then they might as well be exhibited where they were found, no?
The plot? Where is it? A manuscript gets stolen from the shop; enter the Scotland Yard detective; ... but the MS is retrieved half-way through? Someone doesn't want to get married and then they suddenly do...? A deus ex machina job appears for Agnes without foreshadowing, suspense, causality?
The love story that may or may not be central to the plot (it is unclear) includes zero chemistry. The couple meet; she is shy; he is bewitched by her fairy-like beauty; and that's about it. Also, she is unsure of whether she wants to be with him but he pressures her and she doesn't want to break his heart. (Wut even. Read some romance novels, Gutiérrez. Discover the amazingness of consent and mutuality.)
The English fantasy land: I guess one could decide simply to find it amusing. Although in this Brexit land of Tory politics, I find little to amuse. Here are some nuggets:
'The favourite pastime of Londoners: that of queuing, the art of standing in line that was almost as popular as the timeless tea time'. (p.66)
Agnes notices that November is over because shops are putting up Christmas decorations: 'In December, all of London clothed itself in Dickensian nostalgia.' (p.61) (Hahaha, in the past, I have glimpsed the first Xmas deco in late September. They're certainly all up by beginning of November.)
Marks&Co (I think this is Marks&Spencer?). Piccadilly Street.
And it seems that mention of the "Danish steppes" is not ironic...?
Read for #the52bookclub 2022 reading challenge, prompt: features a library or bookstore.
Format: Now the format is a delight. It is a hardback that does not weigh a lot and that is no bigger than a trade paperback. (Hello, British publishers! Hardbacks do not need to be 5 kg bricks that fit in no normal-size shelf!) The pages are creamy. They open wonderfully, despite the perfect binding, with no spine cracking, no muscle effort necessary to turn them, and there is ribbon book marker which I appreciate very much. Thank you, Thiele Verlag! The cover is gorgeous, designed by Christina Krutz, using a photo by Ian Lamond. Some google sleuthing on my part revealed that the photo shows The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley, Yorkshire.
Crossposted to Goodreads.
Two stars for content, one star for format.
Let's start with the content. I was charmed by the first fifty pages. This is fine world-building: a kind of alternate London that is actually the fantasy London of a non-Briton. It is a little bit how I thought of England before I moved here many years ago. Gutiérrez who is Spanish stands in for all the continental Europeans (and perhaps others), and particularly for those whose mother tongue is not English, and who dream up a tourist destination of five o'clock teas, drizzly cobble stones and eccentric gentlemen who quote Lewis Carroll.
Then, after the first fifty pages, this world started to gall.
Brief plot (seeing that most other reviews are not in English as the book has not been translated): A young archaeologist, Agnes, arrives in London, hoping to find work as an archaeologist. She gets a temporary job in Mr Livingstone's bookstore. Mr L is a curmudgeonly but kindly book lover who wears three-piece suits with a fob watch. Also part of his bookstore community are: an eight-year-old boy who loves astronomy and is parked there by his mother in lieu of babysitting; Mr L's girlfriend, the publisher Sioban; the 'writer in residence' who uses the bookstore as a study; John Lockwood of Scotland Yard who falls in love with Agnes; Jasmine, Agnes' Black flatmate and friend; R. Cadwallader the pub cook who falls in love with Jasmine, and a côterie of customers who enter the shop with clueless requests. Everybody quotes books a lot, particularly Shakespeare and a medley of others (it was rather amusing to spot all the sources; I got nearly all of them.) "A feel-good novel", proclaims Que Leer on the back cover.
I read the excellent German translation by Petra Zickmann of the Spanish original book. The English quotes below are my own translations from the German translation.
What galled:
The title's eponymous Mr Livingstone is an heir of the original Stanley Livingstone who traipsed through parts of Africa. This Victorian Livingstone is part of a highly problematic project: British Imperialism and colonialism, European racism. This book blithely ignores this. Note: the book was first published in 2017, and in a country that was itself a European coloniser so ignorance cannot be pled. Africa is the 'exotic contintent' (p.86). The 8-year-old boy bemoans the loss of mystery:
"Like back then, when the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Mr Livingstone mapped out the Kalahari desert, navigated down the Zambezi river and named the waterfalls after Queen Victoria. After that there was nothing left to research or to discover." (p.171)
What to say.
The next problematic point concerns the Elgin marbles. The het couple spend a romantic evening among them in the British Museum. The book does acknowledge the controversy surrounding them, namely, that Greece wants them returned. The archaeologist says she does not know if they should be returned:
"I don't know. Many other Egyptian pieces are also affected. If the British and French archaeologists had not taken their finds home back then, hardly anything would now be left of this valuable cultural heritage. Most of it would have fallen prey to grave robbers, ended up on the black market in antiques, been destroyed by acts of terror or wars or have disappeared, thanks to the monstrous corruption of the regimes in Cairo. Those were wild times, and in the nineteenth century, Europe was a relatively safe place for these treasures." (p.230)
Oh dear. Greece and, in an elegant sleight of hand, Egypt as corrupt, riddled with terrorists, black marketeers and grave robbers, prone to war, with Europe as the saviour? Who bought those objects on the black market, I wonder? Well, I don't need to wonder, I know it from art history (side note: I am an art historian): Europeans. And there is no mention of the museum that Athens has specially built, with all the mod cons, to house the Parthenon marbles next to the Parthenon. Instead, more obfuscatory ideological self-justification:
"Relics ... belong to all of humanity and because of this, because of their universal character, we should not care in which country or in which museum they are exhibited." (p.230)
if it doesn't matter where they are, then they might as well be exhibited where they were found, no?
The plot? Where is it? A manuscript gets stolen from the shop; enter the Scotland Yard detective; ... but the MS is retrieved half-way through? Someone doesn't want to get married and then they suddenly do...? A deus ex machina job appears for Agnes without foreshadowing, suspense, causality?
The love story that may or may not be central to the plot (it is unclear) includes zero chemistry. The couple meet; she is shy; he is bewitched by her fairy-like beauty; and that's about it. Also, she is unsure of whether she wants to be with him but he pressures her and she doesn't want to break his heart. (Wut even. Read some romance novels, Gutiérrez. Discover the amazingness of consent and mutuality.)
The English fantasy land: I guess one could decide simply to find it amusing. Although in this Brexit land of Tory politics, I find little to amuse. Here are some nuggets:
'The favourite pastime of Londoners: that of queuing, the art of standing in line that was almost as popular as the timeless tea time'. (p.66)
Agnes notices that November is over because shops are putting up Christmas decorations: 'In December, all of London clothed itself in Dickensian nostalgia.' (p.61) (Hahaha, in the past, I have glimpsed the first Xmas deco in late September. They're certainly all up by beginning of November.)
Marks&Co (I think this is Marks&Spencer?). Piccadilly Street.
And it seems that mention of the "Danish steppes" is not ironic...?
Read for #the52bookclub 2022 reading challenge, prompt: features a library or bookstore.
Format: Now the format is a delight. It is a hardback that does not weigh a lot and that is no bigger than a trade paperback. (Hello, British publishers! Hardbacks do not need to be 5 kg bricks that fit in no normal-size shelf!) The pages are creamy. They open wonderfully, despite the perfect binding, with no spine cracking, no muscle effort necessary to turn them, and there is ribbon book marker which I appreciate very much. Thank you, Thiele Verlag! The cover is gorgeous, designed by Christina Krutz, using a photo by Ian Lamond. Some google sleuthing on my part revealed that the photo shows The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley, Yorkshire.
Crossposted to Goodreads.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-05 02:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-07 12:46 am (UTC)