The Lost Bookshop: Magic moves into women’s fiction, with enjoyable results

The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods

In the aftermath of the pandemic, fantasy caught the midtown bus and moved into the suburbs of women’s fiction. There, it’s set up shop and seems to be doing quite well, if paperbacks like The Lost Bookshop, by Evie Woods, are any indication. This pleasant story, following three characters and an elusive, magical bookshop, is enjoyable even if it didn’t fully satisfy this fantasy reader.

Set in modern day Dublin, the story follows Martha, a woman fleeing an abusive relationship, Henry, a PhD student desperately searching for a lost manuscript that will make his academic career, and Opaline, coming of age in the 1920s, who fights for autonomy against a cruel and controlling older brother. This review contains mild spoilers.

A destitute Martha takes a housekeeping job with the irascible and larger-than-life Mrs. Bowden, who says she was an actress in her youth. Eccentric and demanding, Mrs. Bowden still provides a basement apartment for Martha—and a lot of guidance. Soon Martha has a “meet-cute” encounter with Henry, who is searching for evidence of a bookshop that used to be at that address. There is no evidence of it at all, but later Mrs. Bowden gives Martha a clue.

While Martha and Henry spar and Martha obsesses over her strange life, back in the 1920s, Opaline flees an arranged marriage. In Paris, she works briefly for Sylvia Beach at Shakespeare and Company Books (James Joyce has a cameo), but then is discovered by Lyndon, her evil brother, and flees to Dublin, where she takes over a strange gift shop and begins turning it into a bookstore. Her dalliance with a handsome book dealer leads to her pregnancy, which upends her life.

We learn that some people believe that Emily Bronte had written a second novel, or at least started it. Martha has the deepest connection to this work although she doesn’t know it. For Opaline, it will become a lifeline when her own life is in its nadir.

Evie Woods

I enjoyed how the magic was employed here. Woods uses folk-tale style magic. Magical things happen. They aren’t called, controlled or regulated. A tree grows out the ceiling to Martha’s bedroom, along with a shelf upon which books appear—books she needs to read. The magical origins of Opaline’s shop are explained in a family story by the landlord. Martha’s connection to the Bronte work is a stretch but Woods sells it.

To my surprise, I felt a bit cheated by the historical parts of the story. Ireland’s notorious treatment of women who were unmarried and pregnant has been well documented, especially whenever the Catholic Church took a hand. In the middle of the book, Opaline is interned in a place that’s a cross between one of the nun-run homes, and an asylum. Woods sketches the “this is a bad place” feeling briefly—it reads, oddly enough, like the terrible boarding school in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Opaline spends the rest of the interwar period and the duration of World War II in this place, sparing Woods any need to address the historical period. The incident in Lyndon’s past that unleashed his inner monster also has its roots in history. Overall, Lyndon and Shane are flat “villains,” with no emotional resonance, and despite their power, both are dealt with pretty easily when the plot requires their exits.

The other thing I struggled with was the way emotion is introduced. I think this reaction comes because I don’t read a lot of women’s fiction and I don’t know the tropes. Of course Martha has to confront Shane, but her emotional reactions are muted, and the story briskly moves back to the elusive bookstore and the missing manuscript. Opaline’s grief when she is told her child was stillborn ends a chapter—we catch up with her years later when her grief has aged and settled. Similarly, near the end of the book, a freed and successful Opaline confronts her brother one final time. This is an unnecessary and foolish act on her part, but it’s needed to give the readers an important piece of information. The scene felt unrealistic from the opening and stayed that way until the end. I don’t want a wallow, but I do want a sense that these are people, and people with a conscience.

My biggest disappointment with the book is Opaline’s story. Apparently, she became a successful book dealer, but the story never shows us any of that, and that was what I was most interested in.

The book was not an unalloyed success for me, obviously, but I loved the idea. Henry’s family members, especially his blunt sister, were delights. The Lost Bookshop is a pleasant way to spend a few hours on a rainy winter day, and in the end, magic has moved into the women’s fiction neighborhood, and settled in just fine.