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The Lost Bookshop

The Lost Bookshop is a novel with elements of bibliophilia, magical realism, fantasy, historical fiction, and romance by the Irish author, Evie Woods. The book also tackles serious real-world issues such as alcoholism, domestic violence and societal misogyny.

The book was published in 2023 by One More Chapter, an imprint of HarperCollins. Woods' writing had previously been self-published under her real name, Evie Gaughan.

The novel was shortlisted for page-turner of the year in the 2024 British Book Awards. It made first place in the Wall Street Journal weekly book list; made the Sunday Times top 10, and became a bestseller at Amazon UK and US. On 23 May 2024, the publisher One More Chapter reported that the book had sold over one million copies.

Summary

The Lost Bookshop, which uses first-person narratives, alternates between the characters in two main threads set in Dublin, London and Paris: one that begins in the 1920s, the other in contemporary times (circa 2020 but making no mention of COVID-19), and which gradually converge in the reader's mind to an eventual dénouement.

In 1921, Opaline Carlisle is in London and is being pushed into an arranged marriage by her domineering mother and brother, Lyndon, a veteran officer wounded in the First World War. An independently minded young woman who cherishes freedom and adventure, she flees to France, rather than agree to marry, and finds work at a bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, where she learns about the art of dealing in rare books and meets famous literary characters, including the novelists James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway.

Meanwhile, in contemporary Ireland, Martha flees to Dublin to escape her own troubled past, and finds work as a live-in housekeeper with an elderly lady, Madame Bowden.

Henry, a scholar, desperately in search of a possible unpublished second novel by Emily Brontë and for a lost bookshop, which play key roles in an academic study for which he's received funding, also arrives in Dublin around this time. Next door to the site where he believes the lost bookshop should be (but mysteriously is not), by accidental fate or destiny he meets Martha.

After being found and committed to Connacht District Lunatic Asylum at her brother's behest, Opaline finally escapes and flees yet again to Dublin and sets up a bookshop there, still hiding from her brother under the assumed name, Miss Gray. Having apparently disappeared from historical records, this makes it difficult for Henry and Martha to track her down as they try to piece together her story.

Although the characters themselves are oblivious to the links that connect them, slowly but surely the threads come together, with the aid of Opaline and the lost bookshop itself, which we discover has a benign will of its own and extraordinary magical powers; and eventually the enigma of the lost bookshop is resolved.

Reception

The novel was shortlisted for page-turner of the year in the 2024 British Book Awards. It made first place in the Wall Street Journal weekly book list; made the Sunday Times top 10 on 31 December 2023, and became a bestseller at Amazon UK and US. Between June 2023 and January 2024, the book had sold over 500,000 copies. On 23 May 2024, the publisher One More Chapter reported in a post on the X social networking service that the book had sold over one million copies. The book was first released in digital format as an eBook and an audiobook and became a hit even before a paperback edition came out. It has been translated into twenty languages.

Corriere della TV notes (in Italian) that The Lost Bookshop contains many literary references that will appeal to literary investigators, book collectors, and bibliophiles. The reviewer finds the historical thread "distressing", writing that "the early 1920s were a time when women were mere chattels of the male members of their family. Their gender ensured that they had no social standing or power."

Reviewing The Lost Bookshop, Mairéad Hearne says that the work has been described as "The Keeper of Stories meets The Lost Apothecary" and that the work is an "evocative and charming novel full of mystery and secrets." Having read other works by Evie Gaughan, Hearne is "totally captivated by the magic and warmth that emanates from her stories."

In conclusion, Hearne writes: "The Lost Bookshop is a joy to read, a seductive tale that sparks the imagination, a truly immersive and charismatic read of self-discovery and strength imbued with a sense of hope and passion."

Kate Storey writes in Culturefly that "[b]ecoming the person you were always meant to be is one of the most uplifting elements of The Lost Bookshop". A "magical story", in her opinion, it is "a wonderful example of how a book about books can lift our spirits and make us feel like anything is possible."

Kiefer Jones, reviewing the work for Books & Review writes that The Lost Bookshop is a "captivating tale"; "an evocative and charming novel with mystery and secrets."

About the author

Evie Gaughan, who now writes under the pen-name Evie Woods, was born and raised in Galway, on the west coast of Ireland.

She studied business at what is now the Atlantic Technological University, and went on to achieve a diploma in marketing in 1996, after a final year at the Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France on a European Union Erasmus Programme.

During her twenties, Gaughan lived and worked in Canada. However, she suffered from panic attacks and developed social anxiety. As a result, she had to quit her job, returned to Galway and took up writing. She revealed that she is "95 per cent sure [she] wouldn't have become a writer if that hadn't happened." A believer in the healing power of books, "bibliotherapy" as she calls it is one of the main themes and motivations behind writing The Lost Bookshop.

Before The Lost Bookshop was taken up by One More Chapter, Gaughan's novels had been self-published. Describing the mainstream success of The Lost Bookshop as "dreamlike",and acknowledging that word of mouth has played a huge role in this, she has now signed a four-book agreement with One More Chapter for the three books originally self-published and one new book. Her next book, The Story Collector will be released in Ireland and the UK in July 2024 and in the US in August 2024.