I love a good book about books, bookworms and/or an independent bookstore. Think The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, How to Find Love in a Bookshop, Jasper Fforde’s wildly inventive Thursday Next series. And when I read Abbi Waxman’s debut novel, The Garden of Small Beginnings, I could not stop laughing at the witty lines and reading them aloud to my husband.
So when I had the chance to review Waxman’s upcoming third novel, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill – about a bookseller – and interview the author herself, I jumped at it. (Spoiler alert: the book and Abbi are both witty, warm and delightfully irreverent.)
Here’s part of my extended Shelf Awareness review, and a few snippets from my Q&A with Abbi, who was such a joy to talk to:
Bookseller and consummate introvert Nina Hill lives alone (with her cat, Phil) in a small guest cottage in L.A.’s Larchmont neighborhood. She earns a living working at Knight’s, an independent bookstore nearby. When she’s not selling books or reading them, she spends her evenings killing it at trivia competitions (as part of the crack team Book ‘Em, Danno) and intending to go to yoga or spin classes.
Raised chiefly by her beloved nanny while her Australian photographer mother travelled the world, Nina has never felt the lack of a family. But when her estranged father, William Reynolds, dies suddenly, his lawyer tracks down Nina and drops several bombshells, starting with the fact of her parentage. Now, Nina stands to gain both a potential inheritance and a large, unruly extended family that she isn’t sure she wants. At the same time, Nina meets Tom, a fellow trivia whiz who might just prove interesting–and sexy–enough for Nina to embark on an actual relationship.
Nina’s story unfolds in a series of intended-to-be-ordinary days, annotated frequently by pages torn out of her day planner. These are crisscrossed with notes, information, grocery lists and aspirations (including those spin classes), and they provide a clue to Nina’s emotional state, especially regarding the new relationships she’s juggling. Waxman captures the internal back-and-forth between Nina’s rapacious intellect, her fairly sturdy self-esteem and her high levels of anxiety, which has led her to seek out constant ways to stimulate her brain.
As Nina gets to know her family, she comes to understand there’s more at stake than a simple fight over an inheritance. William Reynolds was married three times and had children by at least four different women, and he seemed to be an entirely different man in each incarnation of family life. Every one of his ex-spouses and their children, understandably, have strong (and strongly expressed) opinions about their particular version of William, while Nina, never having met him, ends up sifting through the conflicting reports and trying to make up her own mind.
Waxman has the gift of writing wisecracking, breezy novels that nevertheless contain some real growth for her characters. Nina is forced to re-examine the carefully constructed boundaries of her introverted life, and decide for herself which ones she wants to loosen and which ones she wants to keep. She doesn’t undergo a radical personality change, nor does Waxman (or indeed anyone else) suggest that she should. But by the book’s end, Nina is more able to function in the world as herself–and she’s getting better at explaining to other people when she just needs a moment (or a day) alone.
KNG: Nina struggles with severe anxiety, but she’s mostly learned to manage it. How did you write a protagonist with anxiety, but address it in a fairly light-hearted way?
AW: Anxiety is so common, and we don’t really talk about it–though maybe we are starting to talk about it more, as a society. Nina has essentially sorted out her life in a way that works for her, so she’s mostly able to manage her anxiety.
I wanted to write a character who was happily introverted and didn’t feel any pressure to change who she was. There’s nothing wrong with being an introvert, and being the kind of person who prefers her own company to that of other people. I wanted to write a character who was comfortable with herself, not just trying to fit in.
Certainly there are struggles–and you always have to ask yourself, “What does your main character want?” Nina, at the beginning, just wants to be left in peace. To be left alone. But then she meets a man who she maybe wants to spend more time with, and the struggle is within herself. Can she get out of her own way enough to try something new?
Nina is a trivia whiz. Tell us about this part of her personality.
I think millennials consume media and creative output of all kinds in a more meta way than my generation did. They’ll go see a movie and then they’ll read lots of reviews about it, and discuss it online. With the constant news cycle, trivia has become like conversational glue–like squirrels sharing nuts, little nuggets of cultural information. For Nina, it’s a self-soothing activity as well.
Nina’s day-planner pages appear throughout the book, and they are so entertaining–a window into her emotional state at times.
I’m glad you think so. Sometimes it was easier for me to show what was going on than to write it. Nina’s trying so hard to sort everything out, and I thought readers could read into the way she was doing things. I could show rather than tell that she’d had a big fight with someone, for example, and was going to turn over a new leaf. And then real life intervenes, inevitably.
Nina’s workplace faces a crisis, but–mild spoiler–she is able to save the day in the end.
I had to go for a happy ending. It’s a bit clichéd, but it’s fun. And I hope people like Nina and feel empathy for her. She’s inspired by all the booksellers I meet when I go around to bookstores. They are without fail intelligent, thoughtful, snappily dressed young women. I would have liked to be like them when I was their age. Ultimately, the novel is sort of a love letter to independent booksellers, and young women in particular.
The kind of books I like to write are a little bit funny, a little bit sad, and with a happy ending. All of my books are the books that you pick up, read and then loan to a friend. I want to be escapist! That’s the best possible outcome for me. I ask myself: Is this a pleasure to read? Is it a pleasure to write? And if my sister thinks it’s funny–that’s the ultimate test–then we’re good.
I originally conducted this interview and wrote most of this review for Shelf Awareness. Nina’s story comes out July 9.
