Book review can also be seen on my book blog. :)

Some spoilers ahead!

I must start out by saying that this book was absolutely amazing and I would recommend it to any bibliophile or anyone who enjoys books about, well, books.

Earlier this year, I started a “to be read” jar – which has now expanded to a small box – and that is how I remembered that The Bookman’s Tale was sitting unread on my bookcase. Once I read it, I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t read it the moment that I bought it. I honestly fell in love with the characters – Peter, of course, because I knew how he felt about having a hard time being social and whatnot growing up. I know how he feels because that’s almost exactly how I was, except I would prefer to curl up in my bed with a beautiful book and cast to keep me company. It took Peter until his college freshman year to understand his love for books.

The Bookman’s Tale follows Peter Byerly in the wake of his wife Amanda’s passing. He barely eats, barely sleeps and he’s even given up his career as an antiquarian bookseller until one day he finally takes his therapist’s advice and leaves the house for what other than a trip to the bookshop in town. Peter finds a book on the shelf of Shakespearian forgeries and inside its pages tumbles out a watercolor of a woman whom resembles his late wife. The only other problem? The painting turns out to be from the eighteenth-century and the only clue on it is the artist’s initials – “B.B.”

In his search to uncover who the mysterious B.B. is and why the woman in the watercolor looks to be of his wife he meets Liz Sutcliffe, an editor of art history books who is working with an author that is writing a monograph of this mysterious man. The novel dips between an older Peter as he tries to uncover the mystery of B.B., the mystery surrounding a book that supposedly was used by William Shakespeare to base one of his plays upon, a younger Peter just as he meets Amanda and their relationship, the Victorian era and even Shakespeare’s time.

What’s fantastic about the dipping and diving between times is the fact that as much as I thought the mystery was going one way, I was constantly kept on the edge of my seat wondering who this B.B. was and if the Pandosto that Peter was requested to sell was real or not. The novel also delves into the question: Was Shakespeare really the author of his plays? Ever since Anonymous came out, the thought has been running through my mind a lot, and besides, who doesn’t love a good conspiracy theory or mystery?

Overall, this book was a fantastic read and I would highly recommend it. Plus, I absolutely can’t wait to read it again sometime! ( )

The novel takes place in 3 separate story-lines. One is set in 1995 when Peter Byerly, bookseller, has moved to Kingham, England, 9 months after the death of his wife Amanda. Another starts in 1983 and tells of Peter's courtship and marriage to Amanda. The third follows the story of a rare book from its creation in 1592. This book and its provenance plus the discovery of a watercolor that looks remarkably like Amanda are Peter's obsessions and the focus of the main story.

Peter has a social anxiety disorder and leads a very insular life. This claustrophobic atmosphere is rendered perfectly. Amanda's ability to move between Peter's isolation and her own social life is like watching a Mother's protection, as well as, prodding of her chick, while dealing with her own needs and commitments. The mystery involving the Pandosto forces Peter back into the world and is a fascinating story. The tales associated with the book hit upon a lot of true events although the immediate facts of the book are fiction. Looking forward to reading more from this author. ( )

“The Bookman's Tale” by Charlie Lovett
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
PRINT:
© 2013, May 28; 978-0670026470; Viking; First Edition; 353 pages; unabridged (Info from Amazon)
DIGITAL:
© 2013, May 28; Penguin Books; 1st edition; 369 pages; unabridged. (info from Amazon)
(this one)-AUDIO:
© 2013, June 27; Penguin Audio; 11:18:00 duration; unabridged. (info from Amazon)
FILM:
No.

CHARACTERS: (Not Comprehensive)
Peter Byerly
Amanda
Sarah and Charlie Ridgefield
Liz Sutcliffe
Graham Sykes
John Alderson
Phillip Gardner
Thomas Gardner

SERIES:
No

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
SELECTED:
I felt it was time for an enjoyable Jayne Entwistle narration and found that she narrated something by this author, but wanted to start with his first book, so tried this one.
ABOUT:
A young college student working at the Robert Ridgefield Library, becoming immersed in the world of books, and in his feelings for a certain young lady. There’s much more, but I don’t want to spoil anything.
OVERALL OPINION:
This is a wonderful story chalk full of mystery, intrigue, sentiment and BOOKS!

AUTHOR:
Charlie Lovett: (From Wikipedia)
Charlie Lovett (born 1962 in Winston-Salem, NC) is an American novelist, podcast producer, children's playwright and expert on the works and life of Lewis Carroll. He has the world's largest collection of Carollean memorabilia and was twice president of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America.[1][2]

Life and career
Charlie Lovett was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1962.[1] He got a B.A. in theatre at Davidson College in 1984 and then went into the antiquarian book business and became interested in the works of Lewis Carroll.[3] He got a Master of Fine Arts degree in writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 1997.[4] In 2003 he became a member of the Grolier Club the oldest and largest club for bibliophiles in North America.[5]

Two of his books draw on his own experience as an antiquarian bibliophile: The Bookman’s Tale and First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen. The Bookman’s Tale made the New York Times best seller list.[3] In 1999 he wrote Love, Ruth: A Son's Memoir about his mother Ruth Cander Lovett who was the great-granddaughter of Asa Griggs Candler the founder of Coca-Cola; Maya Angelou called this book "tender and sensitive and true."[6] More than 5000 productions of his children's plays have been performed all over the world.[4]

He hosts the podcast "Inside the Writer’s Studio."[7]

NARRATOR(S):
John Bedford Lloyd (From Wikipedia)
John Bedford Lloyd (born January 2, 1956) is an American character actor.

Life and career
Lloyd was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Ann Storrs Lloyd and Edward B. Lloyd of Southport, Connecticut. His father was an architect.[1] He has a sister, Susan Storrs Lloyd, and a brother, Thomas Bedford Lloyd. Thomas was married to Susan DeLong Ball.

While studying at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, he was cast in the play One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and decided to become a professional actor.[2]

He later attended Yale School of Drama.[1] After graduating, he moved to Manhattan and began his professional acting career on the stage. He's appeared in movies such as Trading Places, Crossing Delancey, Philadelphia, Fair Game, The Bourne Supremacy, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, The Front Runner and in TV series such as Hometown, Law & Order, Aliens in the Family, John Adams, and Ozark.[3]

He married actress Anne Twomey on August 23, 1986.[1] The couple has two daughters, Hannah and Elizabeth.

*ME: Once I got over the fact that this one wouldn’t be narrated by Jayne Entwistle, I greatly enjoyed the narration, and of course with a male protagonist, I have to confess he was a better choice that Jayne.

GENRE:
Fiction; Crime; Suspense; Historical Mystery; Romance; British Literature; Literary Fiction

SUBJECTS (Not comprehensive):
Romance; Books, Antiquities, British History

TIME PERIOD
1592; 1609; 1612; 1983-1988; 1995

LOCATIONS
Hay-on-Wye; Breckonshire, Wales ; Kingham

DEDICATION:
“For my father, Bob Lovett Who infected me with an incurable bibliomania.”

EXCERPT
From “Hay-on-Wye, Wales, Wednesday, February 15, 1995”
“Wales could be cold in February. Even without snow or wind the damp winter air permeated Peter’s topcoat and settled in his bones as he stood outside one of the dozens of bookshops that crowded the narrow streets of Hay. Despite the warm glow in the window that illuminated a tantalizing display of Victorian novels, Peter was in no hurry to open the door. It had been nine months since he had entered a bookshop; another few minutes wouldn’t make a difference. There had been a time when this was all so familiar, so safe; when stepping into a rare bookshop had been a moment of excitement, meeting a fellow book lover a part of a grand adventure.
Peter Byerly was, after all, a bookseller. It was the profession that had brought him to England again and again, and the profession that brought him to Hay-on-Wye, the famous town of books just over the border in Wales, on this dreary afternoon. He had visited Hay many times before, but today was the first time he had ever come alone.
Now, as the cold ache in his extremities crept toward his core, he saw not a grand adventure but only an uncomfortable setting, a stranger, and the potential for shyness and unease to descend into anxiety and panic. Anticipation brought cold sweat to the back of his neck. Why had he come? He could be safe in his sitting room with a cup of tea right now instead of standing on a cold street corner with a sense of dread settling into the pit of his stomach.
Before he could change his mind, he forced himself to grasp the door handle and in another second he was stepping into what should have been welcoming warmth.
“Afternoon,” said a crisp voice through a haze of pipe smoke that hovered over a wide desk. Peter mumbled a few syllables, then slipped through an open doorway into the back room, where books lined every wall. He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining the cocoon of books shielding him from all danger, inhaling deeply that familiar scent of cloth and leather and dust and words. His rushing pulse began to slow, and when he opened his eyes he scanned the shelves for something familiar—a title, an author, a well-remembered dust jacket design—anything that might ground him in the world of the known.
Just above eye level, he spotted a binding of beautiful blue leather that reminded him of the calf he had used to bind another book—could it have been nearly ten years ago? He pulled the book from the shelf, reveling in the smooth, luxurious feel of the leather. Taking a closer look at the gold stamping on the spine, Peter smiled. He knew this book. If not an old friend, it was certainly an acquaintance, and the prospect of spending a few minutes between its covers calmed his nerves.
An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers, by Edmond Malone, was a monument of analysis that unmasked one of the great forgers of all time, William Henry Ireland. Ireland had forged documents and letters purporting to be written by William Shakespeare, and even the “original manuscripts” of Hamlet and King Lear. Peter turned past the marbled endpapers to the title page: it was a copy of the first edition of 1796. He loved the feel of heavy eighteenth-century paper between his fingers, the texture of the indentations made on the page by the letterpress. He flipped a few pages and read:
It has been said that every individual of this country, whose mind has been at all cultivated, feels a pride in being able to boast of our own great dramatick poet, Shakespeare, as his countryman: and proportionate to our respect and veneration for that extraordinary man ought to be our care of his fame, and of those valuable writings he left us.
Peter smiled as he recalled reading “those valuable writings” from an actual copy of the First Folio, that weighty 1623 volume of Shakespeare’s works in which many of his plays were printed for the first time. He was calm now—all sense of dread and panic banished by the simple act of losing himself in an old book. Remembering how that First Folio, given the opportunity, always fell open to the third act of Hamlet, he spread the covers of the Malone and let the pages fall where they would. The book opened to page 289, revealing a piece of paper about four inches square. The brown foxing on the pages between which the paper had been pressed told Peter it had been there for at least a century. Out of habit more than curiosity he turned the paper over.
The sharp pain that stabbed his chest almost made him drop the book onto the dusty floor. He thought he had outrun that pain, that he could escape it with distance and distraction, but even in the corner of a bookshop in Hay-on-Wye it had found him. Knees suddenly weak, he slumped against a bookcase and watched, as if in a dream, as the paper fluttered to the floor. The face was still there; he closed his eyes, willing the face and all that went with it to retreat, willing his pulse to slow once more and his hands to stop shaking. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. She lay there calmly, serenely, looking up at him, waiting. It was his wife. It was Amanda.
But Amanda was dead—buried nine months ago in the red earth of North Carolina, an ocean away. A heartbeat away. And this painting, so much older than Amanda or her mother or her grandmother, could not possibly portray her. But it did.
Peter leaned over to retrieve the paper from the floor and examine it more closely. It was an expert watercolor, almost imperceptibly signed with the initials “B.B.” He looked again at the book from which it had fallen, hoping for a clue to the watercolor’s origin. On the front endpaper was a penciled interlocking “EH,” the monogram of some long-forgotten owner. The description printed on a card inside the cover made no mention of a watercolor, only the price: £400. He had seen copies cataloged for half that. Copies that didn’t hide a century-old painting of his dead wife.
On the shelf in front of him was a shabby copy of Dickens’s unfinished final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The original cloth binding was worn at the corners and spine, the hinges were broken, and a few pages were loose, but nothing was missing. He could easily restore it to be worth two or three times the asking price.
Glancing around, he found himself still alone in the room. His hand trembling, Peter slipped the watercolor into Edwin Drood. He could not leave Amanda here, so far from home. He reshelved the Malone and tucked Drood under his arm. Twenty minutes later he had purchased a stack of books, including the Dickens, and was walking toward the car park on the outskirts of town, two heavy bags hanging at his sides.“

RATING:
5 stars.

STARTED-FINISHED
8/22/2024 – 9/12/2024 ( )

I admit that to some extent I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't say it was a well-written book. I found the writing clumsy, and I found the plot confusing and difficult to follow. One of the worst examples of the poor writing was when Peter entered Skykes's cottage and found the disaster. Even though he was looking at what was described as a total ransack of the place, it took him a good long while to figure out something was wrong. I just don't have patience for that kind of writing. Given the setting for the story -- academia, book collectors, great literature -- it was a disappointment, but as a beach-type read, it was OK. The problem may have been that I wasn't at the beach. ( )

EDIT: Dropped to 4 stars upon rereading in 2021.


This wonderful tale had so many of the things I like in a book...shifting perspectives, interwoven timelines, genealogical implications, a literary setting, an understated love story, and an imaginative yet plausible-enough imaginative storyline all told with (contented sigh) properly-composed sentences and a wide selection of well-employed words.

Not quite the mind-spa of Shadow of the Wind, but I'm still giving this a Five Star rating because it was such a joy to read after a string of disappointments. ( )