SEPTEMBER 2022 - AudioFile
Narrator Alexa Morden tells the story of a dysfunctional independent bookstore in the Washington, DC, area. Owner Sophie Bernstein abdicates her responsibilities as she grieves for her late husband and worries about anti-Semitic hate. She even wonders if she can retreat to a secret room in her bookstore when her events manager, Clemi, brings a highly controversial poet for a public reading. Morden’s world-weary, sardonic tone fits Sophie’s current state of mind. With a droll matter-of-fact delivery that invites laughter, Morden tracks daily store disasters, many involving animals and an unreliable vacuum cleaner. Moving from a younger, lighter voice for Clemi to a slower, indecisive tone for Sophie, Morden shifts her voice to match the quirky characters’ mannerisms. C.A. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Newsday
What could be more fun than a week of chaos at a Washington, D.C., bookstore? Nothing, at least not in the hands of this queen of literary comedy, once a bookstore events manager herself. Hipster employees, self-involved writers, cruel tow-truck drivers and a malodorous store pet are all present and accounted for.
The Washingtonian
A lightly fictionalized, highly exaggerated, and very entertaining look at the lives of beleaguered booksellers.
author of Admit This to No One Leslie Pietrzyk
There's not a wittier, zanier, smarter book about books and the people who love them than Bookish People. After reading about this single screwball week in the book biz, you'll want to hug your closest bookseller (and maybe apply for a job).
author of Love Bomb Lisa Zeidner
Take a bookstore owner who is sick of books, a pompous poet who has managed to get himself canceled, and a crew of overqualified millennial employees, then add a week of political upheaval and a rare celestial event. The result is Bookish People, a sharp yet tender comedy of bookstore manners. Susan Coll has written a love letter to bibliophiles everywhere with too many hilarious parts to list—though the tortoise named Kurt Vonnegut Jr. may be my all-time favorite literary pet.
The Washington Post
An insightful and entertaining look behind the shelves and into the lives of the people who stock them . . . Coll's novel captures the fragmented overload of modern life so successfully . . . it's satisfying as a trip to your local indie bookstore.
Booklist
Coll (The Stager, 2014) ably juggles chaotic details, turning them into hilarious running gags while making it completely clear why Sophie wants to bury herself in the book - though she can't, because the power went out. While this is full of nods to the publishing world that those in the know will appreciate, every reader who loves books will relish Coll's comedy of errors.
New York Times bestselling co-author of The Golden Sarah Pekkanen
A smart, original, laugh-out-loud novel that fans of Tom Perrotta will adore. If you sell, buy, or simply love books, Bookish People is for you. I wholeheartedly recommend this quirky gem.
Axios
D.C.'s new 'it' novel . . . Bookish D.C. people will be amused by the abundant literary asides and scene-setting gold coins.
internationally bestselling author of Miracle Cree Angie Kim
Susan Coll's Bookish People is a delightful, hilarious, and utterly charming novel about a quirky bookstore and its motley crew—ridiculously lovable people who think way too much about words, writing, dead authors, customers' dogs, cats who torment birds, canceled author events, British ovens, readers, vacuum cleaners, and Russian tortoises. The perfect read for bookish people everywhere!
Library Journal
06/01/2022
PEN/Faulkner Foundation president Coll's latest novel (after The Stager) is set in the immediate aftermath of the infamous 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA, in which a counter-protester was killed. Readers meet the multigenerational staff at an independent Washington, DC, bookstore as they navigate personal and professional dilemmas. The bookstore's owner, Sophie Bernstein, has just been widowed; the loss, in combination with the country's political turmoil, is causing her to have a break with reality. Overworked and underappreciated events manager Clemi is an aspiring writer who's struggling to find her footing in life. Throw in a busy and understaffed store, several controversial author events, pets running amok, and an impending solar eclipse, and you have a story where dark and comedic plot lines converge. VERDICT Coll's novel is a lot more serious than its cover communicates; it explores thorny issues such as the rise of neo-Nazism, career burnout, and the question of separating art from artist. Fans of novels with plenty of literary and political references or of relationship fiction will enjoy.—Migdalia Jimenez
SEPTEMBER 2022 - AudioFile
Narrator Alexa Morden tells the story of a dysfunctional independent bookstore in the Washington, DC, area. Owner Sophie Bernstein abdicates her responsibilities as she grieves for her late husband and worries about anti-Semitic hate. She even wonders if she can retreat to a secret room in her bookstore when her events manager, Clemi, brings a highly controversial poet for a public reading. Morden’s world-weary, sardonic tone fits Sophie’s current state of mind. With a droll matter-of-fact delivery that invites laughter, Morden tracks daily store disasters, many involving animals and an unreliable vacuum cleaner. Moving from a younger, lighter voice for Clemi to a slower, indecisive tone for Sophie, Morden shifts her voice to match the quirky characters’ mannerisms. C.A. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2022-05-11
The wacky world of books and the people who love them, as seen through a week in the life of a Washington, D.C., bookstore.
Recently widowed bookstore owner Sophie Bernstein, 54, is trying to find her footing after the death of her beloved husband and the other disorienting events of 2017 (Charlottesville looms large), but it's not easy. For one thing, almost all the people in her life are her employees and are much younger than her. Comic novelist Coll, herself a longtime bookstore events manager, brackets this winsome midlife picaresque by placing Sophie at two young people's parties. At the opener, the youth have gathered to guzzle some vile but dangerously potent liquor (they chant “Mis…ses…Bern…stein” to get her to take a swig); at the close, they suck down Penumbra Punch at a rooftop solar eclipse party. Along the way, Sophie faces extreme drama of all kinds, from the threat of a protest over the visit of a rapacious British poet blamed for his wife's suicide to having her car towed because her keys have been sucked up by her vacuum cleaner, the fearsome Querk III. Her other vacuum cleaner, a Roomba, is the closest thing she has to a new boyfriend. Meanwhile, the book jokes don't stop coming. The fiction debut of a 25-year-old Parisian-born Afghani Irish woman titled The Girl in Gauzy Blue—of course they can't keep it in stock. A book called The Uncommon Quayle—speculative fiction featuring Vice President Dan Quayle as an undercover narcotics agent—not so much. And literally everyone Sophie meets, including a lawyer threatening suit, wants her input on a book idea. A smelly but prescient tortoise named Kurt Vonnegut Jr. recalls the rabbit of Coll's hilarious previous novel, The Stager (2014). Certain plotlines, such as one about Sophie building out a secret room in the bookstore so she will never have to go home to an empty house, don't seem to go anywhere, but, well, who wants to go anywhere?
As much fun as Coll has with vacuum cleaners—a truly surprising amount—it's literary humor where she slays.
