USA Today bestselling author Susan Coll is the author of eight novels, including The Literati, Real Life & Other Fictions, and Bookish People. Her other books include The Stager, Acceptance, Rockville Pike, and Karlmarx.com.
[Coffee with a Canine: Susan Coll & Zoe; The Page 69 Test: Acceptance; The Page 69 Test: Beach Week; The Page 69 Test: The Stager; The Page 69 Test: Real Life and Other Fictions]
At Lit Hub Coll tagged six favorite books about books and bookstores, including:
John Tottenham, ServiceRead about the other books on Coll's list at Lit Hub.
This gritty, bleak, nihilistic, yet darkly funny, novel contains more insight into bookseller life than the many dozens of other contemporary novels on the subject—and I say that as a person who actually loves working at an independent bookstore. Lest this wind up on any of the aforementioned display tables of books about bookstores, it perhaps ought to have a trigger warning slapped on the cover, explaining that it might shatter the reader’s illusions about the charms of bookstore life.
Set in the rapidly gentrifying Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, protagonist Sean Hangland is on the cusp of turning 50, working as a bookseller, and, at least on these pages, in a perpetually foul mood. He is not just broke but has creditors at his door. He should have, could have, would have been a musician, but instead he is working on a novel and eking out a living hawking other people’s books. Or not, as it happens. Don’t call the store to ask him to find a title, because he’lllikely set the phone down, work on a crossword puzzle, and then, if you are still holding, tell you it’s not in stock.
He isn’t just cantankerous in the standard way of fictional (and in some cases, real life) booksellers. He is on the verge of going full ballistic berserk-o, and in fact in one scene he uses books as projectiles, hurling titles off the philosophy shelf.
When Sean is called out by the manager for the frequent, and cumulative bad Yelp reviews commenting on his approach to customer service, he retorts: “There have been some very difficult customers in here recently. We should start our own Yelp page to complain about them.”
Service is also a realistic story about a frustrated middle-aged former journalist and aspiring novelist idling in an ultra-low-paying job. Sean might be bookish, but he has come to loath most books—in no small part because he is jealous of their success. He complains about the laborious prose of other writers, for example, while slipping words such sesquipedalian and pleniloquence into his rants.
There’s not much of a plot here, but Tottenham had me turning the pages just to see if things could get much worse. Service is perhaps the smartest, albeit grimmest book about working in a bookstore that I’ve ever read.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
