Heron Books

Before opening the shop, I had never been on Instagram. This meant that I had never referred seriously to ‘My Story.’ And I had never taken a picture of my food. I would just… eat it. Hard to believe now as I scatter Halen Môn pumpkin salt spice on my morning coffee, line up the handles of my Le Creuset mug and Bialetti Moka Pot at a pleasing angle on William Morris print coasters, consider whether a vase of flowers is needed in the background to add another level, hide the kitchen roll visible in one corner of the table (kitchen roll? I only use linen napkins in muted tones)…

‘My shoes are worn out,’ Natalia Ginzburg writes in her essay collection, The Little Virtues, ‘and the friend I live with at the moment also has worn-out shoes. When we are together we often talk about shoes. If I talk about the time when I shall be an old, famous writer, she immediately asks me ‘What shoes will you wear?’ Then I say I shall have shoes made of green suede with a big gold buckle on one side.’ During the German occupation in Rome, Ginzburg had only one pair of shoes. She learned to live with worn-out shoes. She wonders about her children, ‘what kind of men will they…

My theme is joy. Herewith, an offering. I have been thinking about the experience of joy: how it differs from happiness, elation or wonder; how it lasts, or does not; what it is to recall the feeling or to relive it; the easy association of joy with music, with odes, choirs; its scent, unique for each of us.* Things that have brought me joy this week include the sight of a customer’s hand, adorned by an oval ring of the most extraordinary green, held against her deep purple coat, this episode of Soul Music, handmade cards from young nieces and nephews one of which depicts my hair too accurately and…

Gliff is a horse rescued by two children. Gliff may yet rescue them. He was facing the abattoir. They face ‘re-education’. Gliff is a momentary resemblance, a transient glance, an impulse. Gliff means to glimpse, to frighten, to glare. It’s a misspelling (did you mean ‘glyph’?), a mishearing (did you mean ‘cliff’?), but not a misnomer for Ali Smith’s new book. The meanings of ‘gliff’ fill the pages – even as they fade from a scribbled note ageing in a character’s pocket – inviting the reader into a game with language, trying to keep up with puns, with the dark implication of farcical events and with a runaway horse. ‘Gliff’…

I am relieved to know that I’ll never meet a rhizodont. A seven-metre-long predatory fish with huge teeth could only be more terrifying if you told me that it had evolved to move on land too so that I am safe nowhere. Oh, it did. Brilliant. I thought I’d covered the stuff of nightmares last week. Nevertheless, since the rhizodont has been extinct for a few hundred million years, I can devote my thoughts to travelling in time with a poetry collection named after the creature. Katrina Porteous’s Rhizodont, spins one through the ages, accompanied by Northumbrian dialects, the chatter of school children and parlance of fisherman, the language of…

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…