Katerina Bivald - The Readers Of Broken Wheel Recommend

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A delight

Somewhat to my surprise, I loved this book.  I was persuaded to try it by good reviews, but approached it with caution because it could well have been dreadful.  Young foreign woman arrives in a dying small town, opens a bookshop, brings new life to both the town and herself and forms attraction to young man which Keeps Going Wrong  – it has the sound of a worn-out, sentimental load of cliché-ed nonsense.  In fact it is funny, rather insightful and absolutely charming without being in any way twee.

Katerina Bivald paints excellent pictures of her characters.  I found them wholly believable, recognisable in many cases and drawn with insight and compassion.  Even some of those who would be hard to like in real life are generally pictured with understanding and often with wit.  She also draws an evocative picture of a small farming town dying as a result of economic hardship and the rise of conglomerates driving family farms out of business and people away from the area – and of hope that it can be saved.  These aspects gave the book a real base of thought on which to build what is essentially a feel-good Romantic Comedy.

Bivald is also excellent on the pleasures and effects of books on the people who read them.  There are elements of 84 Charing Cross Road, The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society and others here – and Bivald neatly makes reference to them with a lovely light touch to let you know that she knows what she's doing.  She does this very cleverly and subtly with other books, too; some time after finishing the book I suddenly realised that her early references to Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre weren't coincidental, for example.  It's beautifully done.

The book is extremely readable – for which translator Alice Menzies deserves immense credit, too, because she has done a superb job.  I found myself utterly captivated, quite often laughing out loud (especially later in the book where humour based on established characters we now know well really comes into its own) and also enjoying both the insights into character and the occasional bit of homespun wisdom, like, "I think that life and sorrow go together like farmers and rain: without a little, nothing will grow."

I'm not that easily charmed these days but I found this book a complete delight.  I can recommend it very warmly.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)