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| detail from the cover of "La libreria dove tutto è possibile" |
LOST FOR WORDS (2017):
I LOVE BOOKS BECAUSE THEY DON’T CARE
One of the things I especially
like in this novel is its being set in York, one of my best favourite English
towns with its amazing Minster, its rich Ricardian legacy, its lovely little
shops and intriguing ghost stories.
In Butland’s novel there’s a
small cute bookshop in the city centre, where Loveday Cardew finds refuge
and solace. She only feels safe when she is there, taking care of the books
which take care of her at the same time in return. Through the pages of great novels
Loveday manages to communicate her deepest feelings: Anna Karenina’s
loneliness, Vaniy Fair’s love for life, Wuthering Heights' overwhelming passion.
One day she starts receiving mysterious
parcels containing books, the books she’s grown up with, so she starts thinking
there’s someone’s out there trying to send her a message. It must be someone who
knows her as well as her the story of her childhood. Loveday’s childhood was complicated, torn
between her absent mother and the woman who tried to substitute her. Her
childhood memories are sad and painful.
Loveday doubts who the mysterious
sender may be but she is sure she can’t go on hiding. If she wants to build a
better future for herself, she has to solve what she left unsolved and buried
in her past.
FROM THE BOOK
“I
like books cause they don't care
if your knickers match your bra
If you've washed your hair.
I like books cause they don't invade your space
They sit on your shelf
They don#t get in your face.
I like books cause they don't mind
Waht your heart contains
Who you've left behind.
I like a book cause it doesn't give a shirt
When you get to the end what you think of it.
Books don't care if you've got a degree
What you watch on TV.
Books don't judge if you've got tattoos
If your friends are few.
I like books cause they don't care.”
Publisher: Zaffre
(2017)
MIDNIGHT AT THE
BRIGHT IDEAS BOOKSTORE (2018)
“All words are masks, and the lovelier they
are, the more they are meant to conceal”
Lydia
is shy and introverted. She loves hiding among her beloved books and among the shelves of the Bright Ideas
Bookstore, where she works in Denver, Colorado.
Lydia is kindhearted with a soft spot for the homeless and the
bizarre people, whom she calls BookFrogs, that
populate the aisles at the bookstore.
When one of Lydia’s favourites, Joey, hangs
himself among the shelves upstairs, she
discovers he has left her all his
possessions, including books defaced in a way that sends her a message about
himself and about her own terrifying past.
She herself had happened to find the young
man’s dead body that night, soon after closing time ,and she had done whatever she
could to help Joey in that crucial moment which would deeply change her
existence. On that horrible night Lydia had found a photo peeping
out of the young man’s trousers’ pocket: unexplicably, that is one of her
photos, a photo from her childhood.
Why
did Joey kill himself right there, in the bookstore? Why did he happen to have
one of Lydia’s photos in his pocket? And why did Lydia get the impression that
is just the first of a series of clues Joey left for her? What is
the message of the books he left her?
In
search for that truth, Lydia comes to recall the images of a terrible night
from her childhood, details buried in her memory start resurfing right now as
well as presences she thought forgotten and lost, like that of her father.
Gripping,
addictive, and smart, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is a great thriller that depicts the
intellect and eccentricity of the setting and will keep the reader guessing
until the very end.
FROM THE BOOK
“To the inexperienced, many BookFrogs appeared as derelict or homeless, but to the seasoned eye it was clear that they’d shed themselves of the world, rejecting its costumes and rules in favor of paper and words.” ― Matthew J. Sullivan
Publishers: Penguin
UK/Windmill Books (2018)
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