Title: The Bookshelf Below
Author: Georgia Summers
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton/Hachette, 2025; RRP $34.99
Reviewed by: Rhonda Cotsell, Ballarat Writers Inc. book review group
The author
Georgia Summers is a half-British and half-Trinidadian writer who spent most of her life travelling overseas including Russia, Columbia and the US. She currently lives in London. She is the author of City of Stardust .
The book
The Bookshop Below is a work of magical realism based around Chiron’s bookshop – being the previous owner who has mysteriously disappeared. Beneath it is a second bookshop accessible only by an archway that comes and goes. This subterranean bookshop contains the remains of a dying river made up of ink which imbues magical power to words read loud by those skilled in the use of its magic. So I was in.
Cassandra had been Chiron’s protege until expelled from his employ for sharing that power with others prepared to pay. We meet her first working part-time in a bar to supplement her income as an expert thief, and continuing to use her skill with ink. But then she finally opens a letter from Chiron, to find he has left the bookshop to her, which means he is no longer alive. It also means, as unwilling inheritor, she is now responsible for maintaining and protecting both bookshop and the dying river.
Georgia Summers discusses The Bookshop Below
@ Confessions of a Book Collector podcast
The main focus of the plot is Cassandra’s trials and tribulations as the bookshop’s caretaker surrounded by a colourful cast of characters who in differing degrees play a role in her search to find out what exactly happened to Chiron. The bookshop was also linked to other tributary bookshops that shared the knowledge of the river and the ink. These are people who already knew her from working with Chiron via the everyday business of selling and buying books. It is also where her reputation as a thief remained, with trust now an issue for some.
Among them is Lowell Sharpe, manager of one of the tributary bookshops who had expected to be Chiron’s successor. Between them however a romance simmers and stumbles with multiple reference to moody eyes, lean and stunning torso, firm and upright stance both personal and physical, and exquisite dress sense. It is also he who forces Cassandra to face her own dark side, not only her thieving but also the role she played in the death of a young man who had begged and paid for her to use her skills with ink on him, and the doubts she herself had ignored.
There is also a secretive, strange and powerful society in the mix, historically connected to the bookshops, but acting separately from Cassandra and company. Its power is ancient, torn by internal dissension and conflicting ambitions as these things tend to be. The members’ names reference the tarot: the Hanged Man, the Empress, Lady Fate, the Magician, Temperance, the Sun, Judgement, the Moon, the Fool and, inexplicably, a Kevin.
Interposed throughout are excerpts, utilising different fonts and formats, including ancient and current from the bookshop: letters, ledgers, diary entries, meeting minutes, notes, scraps, an unsent, half burnt apology from Cassandra to Lowell. The detritus of time. These add a depth and width of time, positioning the society itself and the narrative overall simultaneously in both past and present.
Read an excerpt of The Bookshop Below
@ Hachette
Though a fascinating plot, my immersion was interrupted by many small things that didn’t fit. Some that either didn’t work or were glossed over. The ink repeatedly referred to as being oily and having a sharp and unpleasant smell, whereas ink smells a bit muddy at worst, and is a thin liquid, not viscous as those of us who use it know it as. A reference to a stone shivering as it skimmed across a lake when describing the eeriness of the river, though those of us who skim stones know they do not shiver so much as hurtle headlong. The name Kevin in the secret society among a list of tarot related other members just didn’t work; it jarred and rather than coming across as funny it read as contrived.
These things undermine the willing suspension of disbelief vital in works such as this. Authors of anything magic especially have a responsibility not to unhinge their readers’ readiness to hand over, in absolute trust, a willingness to believe the unbelievable. To be confident that somewhere a river of ink transfers words that turn readers into someone they are not – which it could be said they actually do, but that’s not the point.
I also found use of the f-word scattered throughout incongruous, not quite fitting naturally within the way characters spoke the rest of the time, nor always fitting the context in which used, seeming to there more for shock value than anything else. Some silliness, like an unfortunate scene drawing attention to Cassandra’s favourite fluffy socks, performing no obvious role except an invitation to conjure them up and see as something adorable? – yes, she does wrong, and is involved in all sorts of strangeness, but look! Fluffy socks!
My overall feeling on finishing was disappointment. However this is only one reader’s experience. There are some pleasing descriptive backgrounds of setting and characters. The world created is full of drama and emotions, romance and danger, and moves forward at a good pace. In conclusion, I lean more to the thought that this is one of those books readers will either love or hate – which is not a bad thing, nor uncommon.
Review copy supplied by the publisher
