(courtesy Hachette Australia)
Realising a dream is one thing, sustaining it is quite another.
That is the stark reality of things for Carmen in Jenny Colgan’s Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop, the follow-up to The Christmas Bookshop, when the old, hitherto ill-tended second hand bookstore she was instrumental in saving, and which in turn played a crucial role in saving her, comes under a whole new threat, one she may not be able to fend off so easily.
Located in the gorgeous precinct of Victoria Street, the a cobblestoned, UNESCO World Heritage-listed thoroughfare in Edinburgh, the bookshop is owned by book-loving eccentric Mr Eric McCredie, a 79-year-old man whose family once had considerable wealth but whose sole remaining asset is a labyrinthine building with retail premises below and desperately in need of updating living quarters above.
Full to bursting with a treasure trove of books that could save the bookstore if customers could just find them, and if McCredie, who tends to treat them almost as children, will part with them, the bookshop fits its environment perfectly, a thing of a beauty and knowledge which Carmen, battling some personal demons of her own, and nowhere near as successful in life as her lawyer sister, Sofia, brings back to enough success to keep the wolves of progress from the door.
But as Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop, the only thing keeping the place somewhat solvent, though its still not enough, is hiring out the bookshop for filming of a movie which purports to show the real Scotland (it does not, to everyone’s cringing amusement) and in which one couple will fall in love with books and each other.
But everything else was so expensive. Keeping the lights on, stock, taxes, delivery charges; everything was going through the roof, and people had less spare money to spend on books – she could see it on their regretful faces, as they lovingly handled a hardback edition of Middlemarch with William Morris endpapers, or asked for all the children’s school book editions second hand. She frowned at the computer, and decided to reuse the teabag she had put in the little sink. Christmas was coming. It had to be good. It would be good. It was a lovely, busy time of the year, wasn’t it?
Carmen, however, who fell in love with books and gorgeous, sweethearted Quaker Brazilian Oke ages ago, knows that success does not always breed ongoing success.
Her relationship with Oke seems to be in trouble – they clearly love each other but neither seems able to articulate that well enough and they stumble before Oke gets a new gig back in the Brazilian rainforest surveying its abundant lifeforms – Sofia wants her out of the luxurious home she shares with husband Frederico and four lovely kids (Carmen adores her nieces and nephews and they remain a warmhearted constant in her life) and the bookshop is making money but not enough to sustain it to a level where McCredie can realise a long-held dream which leads him to entertain an offer from a rapacious retailer whose turning Edinburgh’s unique retailing landscape into a trashy Disneyland.
That’s a lot to deal with for any one protagonist, and you can never accuse Colgan of letting her characters off lightly, and as Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop progresses, while you suspect there will be some kind of happy-ever-after, there appears to be no guarantee it will materialise quickly, if at all.
But this is Carmen, and while she may not have scaled the heady heights of Sofia’s life and career nor turned the bookshop into a literary sensation that will enable it to weather all ills that comes its way, you have a sense all the way through Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop that she’ll find a way through her current challenges too.
Quite how is what keeps this delightfully cosy and lovely novel burbling along.
There are no easy answers to trenchant questions and Colgan, though she weaves a festive fairytale of sorts with soul-reviving precision and empathy, is not about to pretend otherwise.
Carmen, Oke and the others will have to work for their rom-com worthy endings, and much of the narrative in Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop concerns how Carmen is going to not just save the ship again but save herself too and turn the dream she first realised into something that can endure beyond the initial and very much welcome flush of success.
Reading a novel like this is a tonic for the soul in a world that doesn’t necessarily serve up all the happy endings we are looking for; it reminds us that it is possible to overcome challenges and navigate obstacles, and that while we may have to fight every inch of the way, that maybe, just maybe, we will find a way through, especially if we rely on the community of people we have around us.
And Carmen has one of the best, the kind of found family that’s characteristically idiosyncratically diverse and which comes to her aid in ways big and small because that is what family, whatever form it takes, does.
The snow, when it came later, fell softly and blanketed the world, muffling any sound from outside; and Carmen slept the most soothing night she had known in a long, long time.
Battered by her issues with Oke, who has some massive problems of his to overcome, Carmen is buoyed by the unquestioning love of nieces, officious Pippa and younger sister, sweetly bumbling Phoebe, and nephew Jack – the other nephew Eric is a baby and not yet able to declaring undying adoration for his aunt but that will come – her neighbours in the shopping precinct such as Bobby and Bronagh, Sofia’s adorably upbeat and likeable new nanny, Rudi, and even Mr McCredie who turns out to be not just an employer but an eccentrically caring father figure of sorts too.
It’s these people who are the difference between Carmen pulling through or going under, and while Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop is a rom-com in part, it’s more pronouncedly a love letter to community and family, all set in the escapist wonder and loveliness of the most wonderful time of the year.
It’s impossible not to read any book by Colgan, but Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop in particular, and not feel like you’re getting a great big hug to your weary soul, and you finish this festively set and spirited book feeling immersed in the true love and support that can come from community.
We live in a tough world, and wonderful though it is, Christmas is an escape, not a solution, but in the shimmeringly substantial and emotionally rich worlds Colgan weaves like Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop, it feels like, with community, family, love and tenacity thrown into the mix, you can pull through, just like Carmen does, and not only have your dream, but get to live and enjoy it too.