Review - Care & Feeding Of Your Little Banned Bookshop by Jennifer Shelby

Preamble

I’ve always admired Jennifer Shelby’s work. She has an excellent sense of prose and the elements of a good story. When I interviewed Jennifer for my podcast a while back, she related to me a story about her upbringing in a cult, which I was not expecting and which left me considering the things I take for granted in my life. Upon opening this book, I wondered at whether this was something autobiographical, or perhaps a shot across the bow in the ongoing culture wars, particularly re: transgender rights. As I read, I was blown away by the twists the story took on its way to its final conclusion, which is as poignant as anything I’ve ever read.

A note about my reviews: I consider myself an appreciator, not a critic. I know first-hand what goes into the creation of art – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the risk. I also know that art appreciation is subjective and lernt good what mama tell’t me – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I’m not a school marm grading a spelling test – I’m a reader who enjoys reading. If a book is entertaining, well-written, and I get absorbed into it, five out of five. It’s either five stars or nothing these days – if I don’t like it, no review. Regardless, I wouldn’t even put a star rating system on my reviews but for the reality of storefronts like Amazon.

Take from that what you will.

Review - 5/5

This is a book about a banned bookshop, a place where the stories that were deemed too consequential to be left to their own devices find a permanent and unfettered home. It’s also a story about alienation, emotional abuse, and recovery from trauma. Throw in some themes of the true cost of free speech, hypocrisy, and the fascistic machinations of fear, and you’ve got yourself a stew… I mean, one hell of a courageous story.

Enter Gabby, survivor of a religious cult, the kind which would probably hold Gilead of The Handmaid’s Tale to be a pretty good deal for humanity. She’s mother to Sapphic daughter Ashlyn, best buds with gay Manny, and neighbour to Rachel Forrest, religious zealot, who’s mother to trans kid Ronnie. Gabby has a little community library on her lawn, a place where people can take and leave books kind of thing. The book starts with Rachel confronting Gabby about finding a book about alternatives to suicide in her ‘son’s’ room. Ronnie is a they, however, and you might imagine how it goes from there.

Rachel bands together with other hateful people to destroy Gabby. She gets fired from her job, gets evicted, and is denounced as a ‘groomer’ by the religious nut jobs. All the while, she is dealing with the emotional scars from her time in her cult. Part of her seems to be wondering if she might even deserve the abuse.

Along comes a how-to manual that is the eponymous ‘Care & Feeding Of Your Little Banned Bookshop.’ It tells her that a Little Banned Bookshop must have a Shopkeeper. Then comes the shop itself, materializing into reality out of nowhere. And magical powers for Gabby - she can literally see a person’s soul, marked out by a book that changes them forever, floating above their heads like she’s a New Age hippie claiming she can see auras. Gabby has to come to terms with the fact that fate has spoken and she is now the new Shopkeeper. She does not accept at first, ironically leaning on The Hero’s Journey conception of herself as a mentor when in fact she is refusing the call to adventure. She just can’t see that she has that MC energy, thinking that her job as a ‘frumpy mother of a teenager’ means that life has passed her by. She simply can’t understand that she too is a hero, one the world desperately needs.

I’m reminded of the story of the Chinese Farmer, a Taoist parable about the incomprehensibility of reality. When good fortune strikes the farmer, and his neighbours tell him it’s awesome, he says ‘maybe.’ When bad fortune does the same, and his neighbours say that sucks, he says ‘maybe.’ Each time, the good fortune turns into bad fortune which turns into good fortune again. For Gabby, her misfortune of falling into Rachel’s sights mutates into her accepting her role as a worthwhile person, like every creature with two feet and a heartbeat. All of the trauma of her youth must be transcended first, culminating in a triumph that’s got some notes of that sweet Baba Yaga action.

She’s one B you wouldn’t want to mess with, and so, it turns out, is Gabby.

You can check it out on the ‘zon here.