Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati. Trans. By Elena Pala. (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2022. 193 pp)
People want stories
In December 2019 Alba Donati opened her bookshop in Lucignana, her home town, a village of 180 people. The bookshop sat on a two and a half metre site on a craggy hill. Just before Covid, in the middle of nowhere – surely a venture destined to fail. But no: in the hands of the right person, such a seemingly mad undertaking can be just what people need, and people came and are still coming to her little bookshop.
She writes: ‘People want stories; it doesn’t matter who wrote them, they need stories to take their minds off things, stories to identify with or take them elsewhere. Stories that won’t hurt, that will heal a wound, restore trust, instil beauty into their hearts.’
A child who loves the bookshop is Angelica, always looking for a ‘different’ book. And ‘when she says “different” she narrows her eyes, leaving this world behind and travelling back in time.’ The author sees herself in Angelica, ‘Finally revisiting my childhood without fear. Because childhood is a trap: there are beautiful things and ugly things, you just have to find a magic wand to turn one into the other. Now that I’ve got my cottage full of books, I have nothing to worry about.’
Family dynamics and gardening
Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop seems to be simply quotidian simplicity, sprinkled with perfect sentences like this: ‘One last glance at the jasmine in full bloom and I retreat into my tower, happy.’ Nothing much happens but we read on, captivated. This book has a sense of quietly building energy with the concentrated power of a haiku. This shouldn’t surprise us because, before starting her bookshop, amidst a busy professional life in the Italian publishing industry, Donati also found time to write award-winning poetry.
In this short bookshop diary, Donati gives us a captivating memoir, with profound insights into themes such as family dynamics and gardening. She claims a sixth sense in bringing people together who belong together. For instance, she persuades her estranged brother to visit their mother in hospital, ‘like a normal sister would. It took me fifty-five years to bring us together again, and forty-eight to get Mum and Dad on speaking terms again.’ She continues: ‘I’m nothing if not patient, working away in my little corner, always looking like I’m busy doing something else. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to heal a wound, other times you just have to forget about it, think of something else, cry over something else. It’s just another job, really, or perhaps more of a vocation: I’m a bookseller who specialises in fixing things.’
Depth and poetry, wisdom and fun
She writes about Villa La Bianca in Vado di Camiore, once the home of critic Cesare Garboli, now a hotel, which manages to preserve not only his garden but his spirit. Recalling her and Garboli’s stimulating, rambling conversations about books and ideas, she wonders how many such conversations are surviving ‘in this age of bickering academics’ and readers only interested in plots.
I just read Emma Cline’s new novel, The Guest (Chatto & Windus, 2023), which has had good reviews for its suspenseful plot. I found it tedious, repetitive and predictable. I didn’t care about the protagonist, a beautiful young woman who is basically a sex worker who steals money from the rich men she forms temporary alliances with. It was so refreshing to return to Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop with its depth and poetry, wisdom and fun.
Donati recommends asking yourself after finishing a book:
1. Was it useful? What for?
2. Did I like it? Why?
3. Did it change the way I think? How?
4. Will it change the way I behave?
Thinking of The Guest I’d answer ‘No’ for every question.
For Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop I’d answer
1. Yes. To enrich my life.
2. Yes. Because it’s beautifully written, thought-provoking and insightful.
3. Yes. It enabled me to see wayward family relationships and damaged childhoods in a different way.
4. Yes – I’m going to spend less time on tedious, repetitive and predictable plot-driven novels like The Guest!
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