Heron Books

Step into the theatre with me. Not past the looming columns and through the gilded front doors. We are not nodding to the doorman, removing our hats, adjusting our neckties and settling into the stalls. Nor are we climbing into the gods to peer down while holding tightly to the rails. Look for the street door people pass unseeing. We will risk the maze on the other side of the curtain. Let’s climb down into the depths of the theatre, thrumming with the company who bring together costume, writing, scenery, humour, tragedy and fear. Skip that step. Sorry. The wood’s a little worn.   Of course we keep donkeys here. How…

Wishing you a very happy Bookshop Day 2024, a concocted concept which I fully endorse along with such events, doubtless already in your diary, as: International Day of Rural Women (15th October – check it out); CAPS LOCK DAY (22nd October – NO, SERIOUSLY); National Pumpkin Day (26th October – I don’t know whose nation; I do love pumpkins). So much to look forward to (I’m thinking of starting Olive Kitteridge Day) but this newsletter is all about looking back with some brilliant history books. I’ve been reading The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV by Helen Castor. I often find it hard to…

I can hardly express how moved I’ve been by Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton, the story of finding a leveret in danger and rescuing it without domesticating it. Chloe Dalton picked up the exposed leveret within mounds of damp grass hoping not to impart her scent but was told by a conservationist that its mother would now reject it. She could not return the leveret to the wild and everyone she consulted about its care was pessimistic: the leveret was likely to die. She fed it kitten’s milk, handled it as little as possible, refused to enclose it (after a brief attempt, on rogue advice), changed her use of lighting…

Like Fanta Mentos, The Sopranos, Le Creuset, Florence (the city and the Machine), smoked paprika, the printing press, this contraption, Jodie Comer and the medjool dates they sell at Reg the Veg, the new Sally Rooney novel is worth the hype. I was nervous before reading it and had shunned reviews. I need not have worried. Between its white and navy covers and checkerboard end papers, I found a clever, complex novel, brilliantly plotted, subtly told, varied in voice and perspective, witty and occasionally farcical, which I could not stop thinking about whenever I had the misfortune to be forced to put it down. Intermezzo is about two brothers, Ivan,…

If you have not met Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton yet, I am thrilled for you because of what you have lying ahead.If you have, I am thrilled at that. There is so much to discuss.   Now, at last, Olive and Lucy have met each other. And they keep meeting. In order to tell each other stories. In order to share the moment where they understand why a person acts as they do. In order to reach out a hand and be received in the same way. ‘When Lucy was done, they sat in a long silence together.Olive finally said, “That’s one hell of a story, Lucy. You should…

A chill hung over The Downs early yesterday morning as we began setting up for the University of Bristol’s Welcome Fair. My fingers complained of the cold when I attempted to achieve the perfect fan of bookmarks (years of training required). By the time our stall was ready, the sun was offering alleviation and the sky was the sort of blue that makes me want to gaze at ceramic pots at Riverside Garden Centre. Did I imagine the scent of spiced cider? Probably. The All-Things-Mulled Appreciation Society had not yet arrived. Regardless, the season does feel changed. One must don an extra cardigan and reach for Ali Smith’s Autumn for…

Dear Reader, ‘All stories are true.Some would disagree.All narrators are Cretan liars.’ – My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss Last week I was mesmerised by finding Gwen John everywhere, building a portrait of a portrait artist from fiction, biography and poetry. The possibilities of writing shone. I thought about how so many of the books we have read in our book groups might be called biography or memoir and yet they are also history, science, natural history, philosophy, travel writing, fiction and more. Black Girl From Pyongyang, for example, is a personal story which becomes an examination of how thorough historical and political research ought to be conducted and…

I do not know if our recent Rainer Maria Rilke event, celebrating Martyn Crucefix’s translation of and decades of work committed to the poet, was the cause of my returning to God’s Little Artist by Sue Hubbard, a poetry collection about Gwen John. Rilke and John became friends in Paris in the early twentieth century. Both had close and complicated relationships with Rodin, noted in Crucefix’s Rilke and in Hubbard’s poetry. I do not know if the painting by Gwen John, The Convalescent, on the cover of Hubbard’s book led me to begin a novel which I have been meaning to read for a long time, The Life of Rebecca…

Permit me sentimentality this week – it is after all a bank holiday and sentimentality the bank holiday of cynicism* – for it was my father’s seventieth birthday a few days ago and, between libations, there has been a little time to grow misty-eyed about Mr Moss. To him, I owe my love of two-tone brogues, of fine blazers and Belstaff jackets, of Victoria Wood, of junk shops, of black coffee, ideally from the Monmouth Coffee Company at Seven Dials, of Campari, ideally from The Troubadour whilst complaining that it is not what it once was. To him, I owe the knowledge that one must never argue with a scaffolder…

The earth converses herewith the attentive heavens;memory overwhelms heramongst these noble mountains. Sometimes she seems surprisedthat we listen so well—then she reveals her whole lifeand has no more to tell. From The Valaisian Quatrains by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Martyn Crucefix. We will welcome Martyn to the shop this evening to hear him read from Change Your Life, his translation of Rilke’s poetry. The poems are filled with surprise and wonder, as well as with ripening fruit, people like trees and trees like people, green sunlight, joyous roses and glowing hearts – all will fill the Arcade this evening. They evoke change and attentiveness to it and invite the…