I'm not sure there's another book on my shelf that so quickly elicits such strong memories and sense of time and place as this one does. It's almost like one of those scenes in a horror movie when a character accidentally touches a talisman of some sort and the music crescendos and we get a horrifying glimpse into that character's evil past deeds of murder most foul. When I flashback to when the bookstore opened, it's not quite horror movie vibes...but if I'm honest, it's close.
The store opened on November 21, 2014 -- the Friday before Black Friday. We were a small staff of four, plus our owner, who was venturing into the book business for the first time. Only two of us actually had any bookselling experience at all. What could possibly go wrong?
That first holiday season at the store was pure, unadulterated chaos. The neighborhood was SO EXCITED to get a bookstore, and there was never a moment when we weren't absolutely slammed. Combine that with the fact that we hardly had any freakin' idea what we were doing and those first few weeks in holiday-rush December were weeks that tried our souls. We hadn't yet perfected our system for special orders, and I'm sure there were several disappointed customers who'd ordered books for gifts that didn't arrive in time. We almost never had any of the popular books in stock because they'd sell out as soon as we got them back in. We didn't even have a website yet!
But we made it. What we lacked in expertise, we made up for in hustle and pure love for the books. For the most part, people were cool. There was an occasional annoyed customer (everyone's frazzled during the holidays), but people understood we had just opened, and were so happy the neighborhood had a bookstore, they were willing to forgive us our sins. We told ourselves in January that that first month was as difficult as it'd ever be. If we'd gotten through that, we could navigate anything. (That turned out to be true until March 2020 rolled around...but that's another story.)
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| November 2014 -- a few days after the store opened. |
I finished The Bone Clocks (here's my review) on a mid-December afternoon right before an evening shift at the bookstore. I remember I was almost late because when I closed the book, I couldn't move. I was almost sobbing, so sad it was over. But mostly just stunned. How could what I just read have come from another human mind?
And the book itself? It's bonkers. Just absolutely nuts. It's six interconnected stories set over 60 years centering on the life of one Holly Sykes. There's no easy way to summarize what Mitchell is up to here. Many readers are probably more familiar with Mitchell's breakout smash Cloud Atlas, and this book has a similar vibe. But more. So much more. It's the story of good vs evil on planes of existence only David Mitchell could write. And it's all set in what Mitchell calls his "uber-novel" -- a universe of his recurring characters.
When I first finished the book, I wrote that it may creep its way into my top five favorites of all time, but I needed some distance before I could make that call. Here we are, 11 years later, and I can tell you it's still there -- still an all-time favorite. And I'm still here, working (and writing) in a bookstore. The Bone Clocks and RoscoeBooks --- two things inextricably linked, both of which I love dearly.
