The Shop in Winter – 07/12/2024

This has been the hardest week of the year.

Forget the week when we read A Girl is a Half-formed Thing for Ruthless Book Club and I thought Harry might never smile again. Forget the week when Reg the Veg stopped selling my favourite pickles. Forget the week when I realised – far too late – that Harauld Hughes does not exist and that I’d been completely taken in by the story of Richard Ayoade’s playwright doppelgänger.

This week I was forced to make a list of the best books I have read this year. I was forced to cut that list. Again and again. Cue sleepless nights, wastepaper baskets brimming with torn up attempts, emergency trips for mince pies (one bite for every book removed from the list, a smaller bite for every book added: it’s not a perfect system).

I have whittled it down to sixteen (books, not pies). The only rule was to choose ten.  
May I present you with My List.
And Harry’s List.
Quite the selection, I think. Do come in and share your books of the year or argue with us about ours if you so wish.

More relaxing has been choosing the books I plan to read over the Christmas break. We’re closed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day so, as you can imagine, that list is several pages long. (Our December opening hours are below.)

Small members of the family may be making lists to enclose with letters explaining how well behaved they have been and thus deserving of that new adventure story about Brussels sprouts while less well behaved adults might be ignoring the pile of cards they intended to write in favour of sampling another mince pie. May I recommend some books for the epistolary-minded:

Busy Post Van by Louise Forshaw
Every child’s dream since that scene in Miracle on 34^th Street: join the postal workers as they sort letters and parcels in this delightful board book with rhyming text to enjoy and sliders to pull.

Percy the Post Penguin by Genevieve Aspinall
Percy runs the post office in the South Pole. It’s lovely. But not well known. He has not had a letter to deliver (on his bicycle, in Antarctica) for some time. Determined to generate more business, Percy sets out to serve the good residents of the area.

The Last Polar Bears by Harry Horse
Having seen a polar bear in a zoo, Grandfather wants to go on a mission to see them in their own habitat. In place of a husky and a sledge, he takes his dog Roo and a golf buggy on a trip to the North Pole, writing letters home to share the story of their extraordinary expedition.

Ajay and The Mumbai Sun by Varsha Shah
Ajay sells newspapers in Mumbai station and dreams of becoming a journalist. But his attempt to impress the editor of The City Paper and secure a job goes rather awry. Then, while picking up a stack of papers to sell, he finds workers disposing of another paper’s first printing press and has an idea…

Célina by Catherine Axelrad, translated by Philip Terry
Inspired by a letter from Madame Henry, Célina’s mother, to Victor Hugo informing him that his former maid had died, Axelrad’s novel tells the story of Célina’s relationship with Hugo. More than their encounters, it is the occasions when she overhears things – a conversation, a reading, a poem – that shape her story and bring her a voice.

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
Set near Bristol in the bitter winter of 1962-3, Miller’s writing glitters like the ice on the windows, moving between perspectives as characters struggle with the thoughts they cannot speak aloud and the wish to connect with neighbours and lovers. The discovery of a letter changes everything for Irene Parry. The discovery of a body does not change much for a seasoned patient in the asylum. When the snow thaws, what will be revealed?

Undefeatable: Odesa in Love and War by Julian Evans
To the city of Alexander Pushkin, Isaac Babel and Anna Akhmatova, Julian Evans would like to write a simple love letter, to his children and his former wife he would like to offer an account of his love for them and the city he first visited thirty years ago. ‘Events insisted otherwise,’ as he says, so plainly and with power. The history of the city and of his life becomes instead a cinematic examination of Odesa as it is now. ‘Odesa was always free,’ he declares, inviting the reader to know the city, even as he watches Russia destroy it.

Dora Carrington: Beyond Bloomsbury
Published alongside the exhibition at Pallant House Gallery, this biography and selection of Carrington’s paintings, sketches and letters recognises her remarkable work and life. One letter begins ‘as the postman only calls once a day for letters, and as my letter is seldom ready… I will start one now to you, with an exquisite fountain pen…’ No wonder her letter writing took some time for, alongside a few sentences, is a drawing of Lytton Strachey reading and Alix Strachey playing chess, watched over by a stuffed ram’s head. In the corner, her own hand enters the picture, exquisite pen poised over a blank piece of paper.

God Complex by Rachael Allen
‘Never to have written a poem about falling in love, which is much the same as moving through a sticky spring stream, the banks of which are made from oil or phosphorous substance: being uncontaminated is impossible. Is a love poem about framing?’ Addressed to the person with whom her relationship has ended, but also to the earth and to Elizabeth Smart and perhaps to you, this narrative poem is full of pain and grief and a cleansing relief from both.

May your weekend be free from the harsh task of honing lists, may it be punctuated by a love letter addressed to a person, a sprout, the earth or a book,
Lizzie

Festive opening hours:
24 December: 10am-3pm
25 and 26 December: closed
27-30 December: open as usual
31 December: 10am-3pm
1 January: closed
2 January: open as usual

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