Book review: The Bookshop of Buried Pasts by Sarah Clutton

The Bookshop of Buried Pasts by Sarah Clutton is the Australian author’s second book and I very much enjoyed her first The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains , giving it a rare 4.5 star rating. I confess I didn’t love this quite as much as her debut (I’m a sucker for a child narrator – ie. Alfie) but I enjoyed it a lot. She delivers the perfect measure of bittersweet sadness and hope. It’s themed around families – those you’re born into and those you find along the way and it offers a reminder of the lengths we go to, in order to protect those we love and hold dear.

About this book

Phyllida Banks is adored in the tiny village of Brookbank, nestled in the Southern Highlands outside Sydney. Admired for her curiosity and wisdom, her antiquarian bookshop is the hub of the community.

So, when Phyllida is suddenly gone, leaving her granddaughter, Lottie, a letter requesting she 'Find Francis', friends and neighbours rally as Lottie grapples with her grandmother's inexplicable actions and her enigmatic past.

Uncovering a fortune of unknown origin, Lottie discovers a trail that leads to Cambridgeshire, England, and another village bookshop with eerie similarities to their own.

As the decades unravel, she stumbles upon the key to a mystery that has baffled police for fifty years. Several people have gone to great lengths to keep the past buried, and it seems Phyllida is at the heart of everything.

My thoughts

This opens with Phyllida’s planned death, which does not (in fact) go to plan. She’s already (however) left a note for her granddaughter, Lottie with references to a past those in her life know nothing about. Clutton then takes us back and forth in time via Phyllida, Lottie and Roddy whose aunt lives next to Phyllida and was her own son’s best friend.

We also meet Dorothea, half a century earlier who leaves a beloved bookstore to help care for a friend’s child after his mother dies and who’s forced to protect the child (and then another) from an angry and violent father.

There’s a lot of past tragedy referenced here. Phyllida’s beloved son (David, Lottie’s father) died at just twenty years old and never got to meet his daughter. And we learn Phyllida left a whole life behind in England, Clutton deftly sharing snippets throughout the novel, via Phyllida’s memories, from Lottie and Roddy’s unpicking of her past and from a diary Lottie finds, written by her grandmother decades earlier. And ultimately what they learn they find hard to believe, knowing Phyllida as they do.

I was certainly intrigued by Phyllida’s story here, but in some ways the strength of this book is its characters. We don’t spend much time with Phyllida in the present but she’s a delight. I loved Lottie and Roddy. We also meet Sienna, the teenage daughter of another of David and Roddy’s childhood besties. Sienna’s the quintessential self-absorbed teenager but offered a different path by Roddy and Lottie.

Relationships also underpin this. We learn Phyllida has been Lottie’s mother figure, as her relationships with her own mother (Miriam) is fractious. And Dorothea ‘mothered’ the children of her friend after her death. I also  appreciated the intergenerational cycles of people (often women) stepping up when it mattered.

This delightful tale is rounded out by the mystery of Phyllida’s past and identity of Francis, who she regretted not reconciling with before she took her own life and who she asked Lottie to find… setting off the unravelling of past secrets.

The Bookshop of Buried Pasts by Sarah Clutton was released in Australia by Allen & Unwin.

I received a copy of the book from the publisher for review purposes.