Rosemary is an 18 year old Tasmanian whose mother has just recently passed away. She has no other family and very few friends as she and her mother lived a fairly solitary, and yet happy, life in an apartment above her mother's hat shop. Her mother's friend buys her a ticket to New York so that she can start a new life and have adventure and so Rosemary finds herself alone and looking for work in the Big Apple. During a moment of uncustomary boldness Rosemary gets herself a job at The Arcade, a large used bookstore patterned after the real-life NYC bookstore, The Strand. The Arcade is an eclectic store with even more eclectic employees. Eventually, Rosemary ends up wrapped into a mystery about a possible missing Herman Melville manuscript. This book had me interested and reading along right up until the last few chapters. The Arcade sounds like a place I'd like, especially as a lover of used bookstores, and Rosemary was a very likable character who I wanted to do well, but the plot absolutely stalled near the end. It gave me the feeling I've had when watching a television series that switches writers and loses its original energy. I literally wondered if Sheridan Hay didn't finish the book.
No comments:
Post a Comment