‘The Door-to-Door Bookstore’ by Carsten Henn
Meet Mr E T A Kollhoff, AKA Carl, an endearing character and he completes our heartwarming fiction list featuring bookseller-bookish-types this year.
Carl may be 72 but he is a man of routine and driven by loyalty to personally deliver the book orders to his favoured, yet few, customers.
In a world where systems must be streamlined and efficiencies in a bookstore must be adhered to, Bookstore owner Sabine is determined to remove all traces of her father Gustav’s ways and this includes his good friend and loyal worker ‘Book walker’ Carl. She fails to recognize the value of Carl and how reliant his customers are on his daily deliveries – they’re isolated or lost in their personal lives within the German city walls.
When nine-year-old Schascha joins him on his daily rounds, she brings colour, life and a hopeful vibrancy that makes a difference in their lives. It is only when Carl fails to appear one day and the heroic actions of Schascha are enacted, that the customers meet each other, and a strong web of community comes together in this heartwarming bookish tale.
We’re a peculiar lot, lovers of fiction, tales and verse – we have an intuition and there’s no greater joy than matching the right book for a person’s life-season to triumph. Throughout the pages, once again, we read about a dynamic community that pulls together through the charming characters that deliver the literary gems. Carl and Schascha bring an unlikely friendship – perfectly paired for this time of their life and show us the need for enacting on intuition and the power that a book can bring to add the spark of life! They not only deliver the hope, but they find that they need each other’s wisdom too for what life brings.
“You see, there is no book that can please everyone. And if there were, it would be a bad book. You can’t be everyone’s friend, because everyone is different. You’d have to be completely lacking in personality, no rough edges or sharp corners. But even then, many people wouldn’t like you, because they need rough edges and sharp corners. Do you understand? Every person needs different books. Because what one person loves with all their heart, might leave another completely cold…”
Available in store and online
Allen and Unwin
ISBN 9781786583079
