In 1942 London, Nancy Mitford is worried about more than air raids and German spies. Still recovering from a devastating loss, the once sparkling Bright Young Thing is estranged from her husband, her allowance has been cut, and she’s given up her writing career. On top of this, her five beautiful but infamous sisters continue making headlines with their controversial politics.
Eager for distraction and desperate for income, Nancy jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war. Between the shop’s brisk business and the literary salons she hosts for her eccentric friends, Nancy’s life seems on the upswing. But when a mysterious French officer insists that she has a story to tell, Nancy must decide if picking up the pen again and revealing all is worth the price she might be forced to pay.
Eighty years later, Heywood Hill is abuzz with the hunt for a lost wartime manuscript written by Nancy Mitford. For one woman desperately in need of a change, the search will reveal not only a new side to Nancy but an even more surprising link between the past and present…
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Apartment and I’ll See You in Paris comes this delightful novel about literary icon, Nancy Mitford. For those of you who haven’t heard of Mitford, she was an English novelist, biographer, and journalist whose most famous book, The Pursuit of Love, was hailed as a work of comic genius and is often considered to be one of the greatest British novels of the 20th century. In fact, it was only last week that I had finished watching the BBC’s recent adaptation of The Pursuit of Love – which was fantastic! – so you can imagine my surprise and excitement when I picked up The Bookseller’s Secret.
The novel is split into dual timelines, beginning with Nancy Mitford in 1942 as she runs the bustling Heywood Hill bookshop, spies for the British, begins a sweeping love affair, and works on her wartime memoir. The novel also follows Katharine Cabot, eighty years later, a novelist struggling with a severe case of writer’s block who discovers that Nancy wrote a memoir and begins to search for the lost manuscript. Both women’s stories were fascinating to follow, and Gable does a marvellous job weaving both timelines together. The novel is also a who’s who of British society, with appearances from several famous figures including novelist Evelyn Waugh and the notorious Mitford sisters.
Richly imagined and splendidly told, Gable has delivered a charming piece of historical fiction that is both a love letter to bookshops and a tribute to the inimitable Nancy Mitford. After reading The Bookseller’s Secret, I’ve added The Pursuit of Love to my summer reading list, and I’m sure that once I’m finished with that, more of Mitford’s books will follow.
I was sent this to review, but like a previous occasion I did not receive a link for my review so I will do it here sorry if I am late.
This is a very interesting book . It is in the form of two parallel stories eighty years apart but linked in certain ways.
In 1942 in war time London , author Nancy Mitford estranged from her absent husband , manages a London Bookstore. She seems to enjoy it. Her life is sparked by an affair with a French officer . She is uncertain if she should write a book about her family.
In 1982 modern author Katie Cabot makes the journey from America to visit the bookshop in search of a lost wartime book written by Nancy Mitford. She finds she is not alone with this mission and she has many interesting adventures during her search.