Review: The Left-Handed Booksellers of London
Gaby Meares
I am left-handed and was once a bookseller, so this book was made for me! In fact, it’s written for anyone who loves all things bookish. Garth Nix has spent his life immersed in books: selling them, promoting them and writing them. His love of this world is evident in his book, which is an ode to the power of books and reading. Nix is the same age as me and his many references to books resonated with me. As Merlin, our left-handed bookseller, says ‘Children’s writers, dangerous bunch’! So personally, I found this book a bit spooky as Nix repeatedly referenced books that I love, for example: Swallows & Amazons, Five Children and It by E. Nesbit, Margery Allingham’s The Tiger in the Smoke, The Ashley Book of Knots (which I just recently bought for my husband), Tolkien’s novels, William Goldman’s The Princess Bride and Adventures in the Screen Trade, Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers and the icing on the cake - the film Random Harvest. But, enough about me…
The plot is a classic fantasy quest. It is set in a re-imagined London in 1983, where the Old World can sometimes intrude on the New World. Susan is in London, searching for a father she has never met, and knows nothing about the Old World until she is rescued from an attacking giant bug by Merlin, a left-handed bookseller, whose responsible for ensuring the Old World doesn’t intrude on the New. Suddenly Susan finds herself in a race to find her father, while being pursued by malevolent creatures from the Old World. She finds allies in the society of booksellers and discovers that she is a part of a world she never new existed.
Nix sets a breathless pace, and he has created a complex world who’s laws and codes are explained along the way. It feels to me that he has invested a lot into this world, and I hope that he writes more books exploring the role of left-handed, right-handed and even-handed booksellers. Although promoted as a young adult novel, I can highly recommend this book for all fantasy lovers.