The Bookseller
1986 / Roald Dahl
Bonbon about a bookseller with an unusual way of extorting money from customers. In terms of characters, it is Dahl’s usual collection of opportunistic grotesques. In terms of plot, the twist is a latecomer and not enough to redeem the story’s flaws. “The Bookseller” really shouldn’t be on this list—it is not an exceptional Dahl offering in any way. Certainly no “Lamb to the Slaughter”—and yet here it is. How to account for its presence when I know it is only average? The answer is this: Your dad relates to the characters. It has meaning to me. And the longer I do this (bookselling, yes, of course, but also living if that isn’t too awfully sentimental), the more I believe that this is what the point of it all is. To connect, my dear little nerd. Only connect.
—A.J.F.
It is so simple, he thinks. Maya, he wants to say, I have figured it all out.
But his brain won’t let him.
The words you can’t find, you borrow.
We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone.
My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.
We are not quite novels.
The analogy he is looking for is almost there.
We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.
In the end, we are collected works.
He has read enough to know there are no collections where each story is perfect. Some hits. Some misses. If you’re lucky, a standout. And in the end, people only really remember the standouts anyway, and they don’t remember those for very long.
No, not very long.
“Dad,” Maya says.
He tries to figure out what she is saying. The lips and the sounds. What can they mean?
Thankfully, she repeats, “Dad.”
Yes, Dad. Dad is what I am. Dad is what I became. The father of Maya. Maya’s dad. Dad. What a word. What a little big word. What a word and what a world! He is crying. His heart is too full, and no words to release it. I know what words do, he thinks. They let us feel less.
“No, Dad. Please don’t. It’s okay.”
She puts her arms around him.
Reading has become difficult. If he tries very hard, he can still make it through a short story. Novels have become impossible. He can write more easily than he can speak. Not that writing is easy. He writes a paragraph a day. A paragraph for Maya. It isn’t much, but it’s what he has left to give.
He wants to tell her something very important.
“Does it hurt?” she asks.
No, he thinks. The brain has no pain sensors and so it can’t hurt. The loss of his mind has turned out to be a curiously pain-free process. He feels that it ought to hurt more.
“Are you afraid?” she asks.
Not of dying, he thinks, but a little of this part I’m in. Every day, there is less of me. Today I am thoughts without words. Tomorrow I will be a body without thoughts. And so it goes. But Maya, you are here right now and so I am glad to be here. Even without books and words. Even without my mind. How the hell do you say this? How do you even begin?
Maya is staring at him and now she is crying, too.
“Maya,” he says. “There is only one word that matters.” He looks at her to see if he has been understood. Her brow is furrowed. He can tell that he hasn’t made himself clear. Fuck. Most of what he says is gibberish these days. If he wants to be understood, it is best to limit himself to one word replies. But some things take longer than one word to explain.
He will try again. He will never stop trying. “Maya, we are what we love. We are that we love.”
Maya is shaking her head. “Dad, I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on.”
She is still shaking her head. “I can’t understand you, Dad. I wish I could. Do you want me to get Amy? Or maybe you could try to type it?”
He is sweating. Conversing isn’t fun anymore. It used to be so easy. All right, he thinks. If it’s gotta be one word, it’s gotta be one word.
“Love?” he asks. He prays it has come out right.
She furrows her brow and tries to read his face. “Gloves?” she asks. “Are your hands cold, Dad?”
He nods, and she takes his hands in hers. His hands had been cold, and now they are warm, and he decides that he’s gotten close enough for today. Tomorrow, maybe, he will find the words.
AT THE BOOKSELLER’S funeral, the question on everyone’s mind is what will become of Island Books. People are attached to their bookstores, more attached than A. J. Fikry ever would have ever guessed. It matters who placed A Wrinkle in Time in your twelve-year-old daughter’s nail-bitten fingers or who sold you that Let’s Go travel guide to Hawaii or who insisted that your aunt with the very particular tastes would surely adore Cloud Atlas. Furthermore, they like Island Books. And even though they aren’t always perfectly faithful, even though they buy e-books sometimes and shop online, they like what it says about their town that Island Books is right in the center of the main strip, that it’s the second or third place you come to after you get off the ferry.
At the funeral, they approach Maya and Amelia, respectfully, of course, and whisper, “A.J. can’t ever be replaced but will you find someone else to run the store?”
Amelia doesn’t know what to do. She loves Alice. She loves Island Books. She has no experience running a bookstore. She has always worked on the publisher side of things and she needs her steady paycheck and health insurance even more now that she is responsible for Maya. She considers leaving the store open and letting someone else run it during the week, but the plan isn’t tenable. The commute is too great, and what it really makes sense to do is move off the island altogether. After a week of heartsickness and bad sleep and intellectual pacing, she makes the decision to close the store. The store—the building the store is housed in and the land it sits on, at least—is worth a lot of money. (Nic and A.J. had bought it outright all those years ago.) Amelia loves Island Books, but she can’t make it work. For a month or so, she makes attempts at selling the store, but no buyers come forward. She puts the building on the market. Island Books will close at the end of the summer.
“End of an era,” Lambiase says to Ismay over eggs at the local diner. He’s brokenhearted over the news, but he’s planning to leave Alice soon anyway. He will have twenty-five years on the police force next spring, and he’s got a fair amount of money saved up. He imagines himself buying a boat and living in the Florida Keys, like a retired cop character in an Elmore Leonard novel. He’s been trying to convince Ismay to come with him, and he thinks he’s starting to wear her down. Lately she’s been finding fewer and fewer reasons to object, although she is one of those odd New England creatures who actually like the winter.
“I hoped they’d find someone else to run the store. But the truth is, Island Books wouldn’t be the same without A.J., Maya, and Amelia anyway,” Lambiase says. “Wouldn’t have the same heart.”
“True,” Ismay says. “It’s gross, though. They’ll probably turn it into a Forever 21.”
“What’s a Forever 21?”
Ismay laughs at him. “How do you not know this? Wasn’t it ever referenced in one of those YA novels you’re always reading?”
“Young-adult fiction isn’t like that.”
“It’s a chain clothing store. Actually, we should be so lucky. They’ll probably turn it into a bank.” She sips at her coffee. “Or a drugstore.”
“Maybe a Jamba Juice?” Lambiase says. “I love Jamba Juice.”
Ismay starts to cry.
The waitress stops by the table, and Lambiase indicates that she should clear the plates. “I know how you feel,” Lambiase says. “I don’t like it either, Izzie. You know something funny about me? I never read much before I met A.J. and started going to Island. As a kid, the teachers thought I was a slow reader, so I never got the knack for it.”
“You tell a kid he doesn’t like to read, and he’ll believe you,” Ismay says.
“Mainly got C’s in English, too. Once A.J. adopted Maya, I wanted to have an excuse to go into the store to check on them, so I kept reading whatever he’d give me. And then I started to like it.”
Ismay cries harder.
“Turns out I really like bookstores. You know, I meet a lot of people in my line of work. A lot of folks pass through Alice Island, especially in the summer. I’ve seen movie people on vacation and I’ve seen music people and newspeople, too. There ain’t nobody in the world like book people. It’s a business of gentlemen and gentlewomen.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Ismay says.
“I don’t know, Izzie. I’m telling you. Bookstores attract the right kind of folk. Good people like A.J. and Amelia. And I like talking about books with people who like talking about books. I like paper. I like how it feels, and I like the feel of a book in my back pocket. I like how a new book smells, too.”
Ismay kisses him. “You’re the funniest sort of cop I ever met.”
“I worry about what Alice is going to be like if there isn’t a bookstore here,” Lambiase says as he finishes his coffee.
“Me too.”
Lambiase leans across the table and kisses her on the cheek. “Hey, here’s a crazy thought. What if, instead of going to Florida, you and me took over the place?”
“In this economy, that is a crazy thought,” Ismay says.
“Yeah,” he says. “Probably so.” The waitress asks if they want dessert. Ismay says she doesn’t want anything, but Lambiase knows she’ll always share a little of his. He orders a slice of cherry pie, two forks.
“But, you know, what if we did?” Lambiase continues. “I’ve got savings and a pretty good pension about to come in, and so do you. And A.J. said the summer people always bought a lot of books.”
“The summer people have e-readers now,” Ismay counters.
“True,” Lambiase says. He decides to let the subject drop.
They are halfway through their pie when Ismay says, “We could open a cafe, too. That would probably help with the bottom line.”
“Yeah, A.J. used to talk about that sometimes.”
“And,” Ismay says, “we turn the basement into a theater space. That way, the author events don’t have to be right in the middle of the store. Maybe people could even rent it as a theater or meeting space sometimes, too.”
“Your theater background would be great for that,” Lambiase says.
“Are you sure you’re up to this? We aren’t super young,” Ismay says. “What about no winters? What about Florida?”
“We’ll go there when we’re old. We’re not old yet,” Lambiase says after a pause. “I’ve lived in Alice my whole life. It’s the only place I’ve ever known. It’s a nice place, and I intend to keep it that way. A place ain’t a place without a bookstore, Izzie.”
A FEW YEARS after she sells the store to Ismay and Lambiase, Amelia decides to leave Knightley Press. Maya is graduating from high school soon, and Amelia is tired of traveling so much. She finds a position as a book buyer for a large general retailer out of Maine. Before she leaves, as her predecessor Harvey Rhodes had done, Amelia writes up notes on all her active accounts. She saves Island Books for last.
“Island Books,” she reports. “Owners: Ismay Parish (ex – school teacher) and Nicholas Lambiase (ex – police chief). Lambiase is an exceptional hand seller, especially of literary crime fiction and young adult novels. Parish, who used to run the high school drama club, can be counted on to throw an A+ author event. The store has a cafe, a stage, and an excellent online presence. All this was built on the solid foundation established by A. J. Fikry, the original owner whose tastes ran more toward the literary. The store still carries a ton of literary fiction, but the owners won’t take what they can’t sell. I love Island Books with all my heart. I do not believe in God. I have no religion. But this to me is as close to a church as I have known in this life. It is a holy place. With bookstores like this, I feel confident in saying that there will be a book business for a very long time. —Amelia Loman”
Amelia feels a bit embarrassed about those last several sentences and cuts everything after “the owners won’t take what they can’t sell.”
“. . . THE OWNERS WON’T take what they can’t sell.” Jacob Gardner reads his predecessor’s notes one last time, then clicks off his phone and disembarks the ferry with long, purposeful strides. Jacob, twenty-seven years old and armed with a half-paid-off master’s degree in nonfiction writing, is ready. He can’t believe his luck in landing this job. Sure, the pay could be better, but he loves books, has always loved books. He believes that they saved his life. He even has that famous C. S. Lewis quote tattooed on his wrist. Imagine getting to be one of those people who actually gets paid to talk about literature. He’d do this for free, not that he wants his publisher to know that. He needs the money. Living in Boston isn’t cheap, and he’s only doing this day job to support his passion: his oral history of gay vaudevillians. But this isn’t to take away from the fact that Jacob Gardner is nothing short of a believer. He even walks like he has a calling. He could be mistaken for a missionary. In point of fact, he was raised Mormon, but this is another story.
Island is Jacob’s first sales call, and he can’t wait to get there. He can’t wait to tell them about all the great books he’s carrying in his Knightley Press tote bag. The bag must weigh almost fifty pounds, but Jacob works out and he isn’t even feeling it. Knightley’s got a remarkably strong list this year, and he’s certain his job will be easy. Readers are going to have no choice but to love these titles. The nice woman who hired him had suggested he start with Island Books. The owner there loves literary crime fiction, eh? Well, Jacob’s favorite from the list is a debut about an Amish girl who disappears while on Rumspringa, and in Jacob’s opinion, it’s a must-read for all serious lovers of literary crime fiction.
As Jacob passes over the threshold of the purple Victorian, the wind chimes play their familiar song and a gruff, but not unfriendly, voice calls, “Welcome.”
Jacob walks down the history aisle and holds out his hand to the middle-aged man on the ladder. “Mr. Lambiase, have I got a book for you!”