This review was written for and first published by Bookmunch.
If the number of review copies arriving through my letter box is anything to go by, publishers are on as big a push as ever to capture the Christmas market in book sales, despite the difficulties put in their way this year by bookshop closures and the ever changing rules on social contact. This little title, however, was the first to arrive that I would describe as a stocking filler. Please don’t think from that classification that I am putting it down. Any reader finding this book in their stocking on Christmas morning should feel lucky. It contains plenty to amuse – an excellent diversion for a recipient doing their best to avoid interacting with rarely encountered relatives, ones who insist on sharing distasteful opinions or recounting anecdotes about people only they have any interest in.
Of course, I digress, as does the author of this book on many occasions. It is these digressions that make the contents so entertaining. Like Bythell’s previous two publications – Diary of a Bookseller and Confessions of a Bookseller – the tone is one of caustic wit woven through complaints about the behaviour of the customers encountered in the second hand bookshop he has owned and run for the previous two decades. There is, however, a greater generosity of spirit than was apparent in his earlier books. Perhaps this is due to the lack of people he has been permitted to observe and serve this year.
In the introduction, the author explains the focus of this latest work.
“It is about our customers: those wretched creatures with whom we’re forced to interact on a daily basis, and who – as I write this under coronovirus lockdown – I miss like long-lost friends.”
He then goes on to categorise and castigate these much missed providers of his income. Using what he describes as ‘a sort of Linnaean system of taxonomy’, the reader may muse over the failings of such customers as: expert, young family, loiterer, bearded pensioner. He introduces the last of these thus:
“This genus includes both males and females, although it tends to be dominated by males (by a whisker).”
Each chapter is further subdivided as the author sees fit. His Genus: occultist, includes the species, ghost hunter. He quotes from a YouGov survey from 2014 in which:
“alarmingly, 9 per cent of people claim to have communicated with the dead (although technically this could include shouting at a gravestone, as it’s unclear from the question whether or not the dead were required to respond).”
In amongst Bythell’s complaints about conduct within his shop are tangential rants about typical behaviour of various customers beyond his walls. Motor home drivers in particular are vilified for driving slowly and emptying their chemical toilets inappropriately.
The sartorial choices of each species are derided and compared – hipsters ignite the author’s ire even more than Goths; the pantalons rouge brigade are encapsulated with relish.
Habits highlighted are, of course, being mined for their entertainment value. In that, the writing succeeds, albeit in a mordant manner. For each smile or chuckle elicited there may be a tremor of guilt in the reader who wishes to regard themselves as of a more generous nature.
Such generosity would, however, be severely tested by regular and unavoidable encounters with many of the customers described within these pages. The corollary is that, as a bookshop customer, the more anxious may ponder how staff have judged their dress and behaviour.
Any Cop?: Many readers will doubtless enjoy pigeon holing themselves and their acquaintances into the genera and species depicted. Just as booksellers come in shades spanning Shaun Bythell to Frank Doel – both adding colour and interest to their métier– so I would counter that life would be a lot less interesting if all customers were of Bythell’s final genus – perfect.
Jackie Law
neverimitate 