Books

Review by Francis Sheppard

The novel is subtitled as Book One in the series The Bookshop Between the Worlds  and the bookshop is where consistency lies in Davis’ elaborately-devised web of interconnecting realities. They spread across time, through Roman oppression of Briton rebels to Spanish Inquisition of Cathar heretics. The connections reach to other worlds, too. Characters turn up again and again, in different guises, having briefly featured as protagonist for earlier chapters. The chapters themselves are often stand-alone stories. Their uncertain recognisabliity is a challenge not only for the reader, but also for Jacaranda, the bookseller. Through her journeying and cruel suffering she herself remains integral. That is not the same with her husband Henghest, whose reappearances in the alternate times and worlds invite questioning of his true identity. It is a shifting, heaving narrative. Reading it is like being adrift on the ocean, not knowing where you will land. The chapter Falling from the Moon, direct from Henghest’s mythical world, casts us up in a contemporary British city, Reading perhaps, where a young woman, excluded by her mother in favour of the mother’s new partnership, contemplates her death in the fast-flowing Thames below her. Davis is at his best as a prose-writer when he develops a character’s isolation and grief. In the following chapter, and subsequently, we are left with the question of who actually jumped from the bridge. Did she (or he) actually die? Even the word bridge has significance, being the name of a periodically-emerging character.

So, this multi-faceted tale tasks the reader pleasantly to make the connections. The writing, involving violence and sexual relations, is not always suited to the broad span of readers. If though your appetite is for modern sci-fi/fantasy, you will find much here that is to your taste.