Posted: November 16, 2021
The Haunted Bookshop
This book is the sequel to "Parnassus on Wheels" and continues the further adventures of Roger Mifflin and Helen McGill, now Helen Mifflin. The couple have given up their wandering ways and have settled in a bookshop in Brooklyn. Roger's love of books is undiminished as he settles down to the life of a traditional bookseller. His place is called the Haunted Bookshop because "it is haunted by the ghosts of great literature".
One day he gets a visit from an enterprising advertising agent by the name of Aubrey Gilbert. Roger isn't interested in advertising but he does manage to share with Aubrey his love of books. Aubrey would not have come back at all if not for the arrival to the bookshop of Titania Chapman. Daughter of a successful industrialist, Titania has been sent by her father to apprentice with Roger and learn some real world smarts.
There is a lot in this book about the quiet goings on in the bookshop but it is also partly a suspense novel. Something suspicious is happening in connection with the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of a particular book: Thomas Carlyle's "Oliver Cromwell". At first only Aubrey is suspicious, leading him to stalk the bookstore and tresspass on it and another establishment down the street. Aubrey suspects some dark plot and wrongly thinks that Mifflin is involved in it.
Aubrey and Mifflin find themselves in a goose chase in Philedelphia before realizing that some plot is indeed unraveling; this after Gilbert has a scuffle with the short-tempered Mifflin. Rushing back home to Brooklyn they are in time to foil a deadly plot. At this point the book becomes action packed culminating in an explosion that partially destroys the bookshop and tragically takes the life of that wonderful Irish Terrier from "Parnassus on Wheels", Bock.
The book ends on a high note however as the burgeoning romance between Aubrey and Titania seems fated to blossom and Roger's dream of creating a fleet of Parnassus on Wheels gets a financier in Mr. Chapman.
Anybody who loves books and reading will love "The Haunted Bookshop" since it, just like "Parnassus on Wheels", and is full of book love. Books are celebrated in this book about books. The beginning chapter includes a wonderful description of Roger and Helen's store, the Haunted Bookshop. It makes me want to come in and browse.
I also liked reading about Roger and Helen's domestic routine such as their late night cocoa, Roger's propensity for losing himself in a book while in his shop, the book club meetings that they hold regularly with other booksellers, and all the other wonderful details about a life surrounded by books. Part of me really wants to lead that life.
I'm a bit disappointed, and also a bit amused, that Edgar Rice Burrough's "Tarzan" is held up in this tome as an example of a bad book. I happen to like that adventurous novel. Instead of Tarzan, Roger is of the opinion that one should patronize Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" instead.
This book was written between World War I and World War II and Roger has much to say about the recently concluded "Great War". I shake my head ruefully as I read Roger's and Morley's implicit assumption that the war is over and there will never be another. Little do they know that an even bigger war is coming.
I'm not a big fan of the suspense aspect of the novel since it takes away from the book-centered narrative even if it does involve Carlyle's "Oliver Cromwell". It's interesting enough and certainly action-packed but part of me wishes Morley had discussed something more bookish instead - like a "war" between booksellers regarding a celebrated library coming up for sale, for example.
The copy of this book that I read had additional material from Mark Leslie which I almost ignored. I'm glad I didn't because it's more book love material. I specially like the part where Leslie was detailing how he got to be a bibliophile including the wonderful habit of the true book addict: buying more books than one can read.