The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
by Alice Menzies (translator), Katarina Bivald
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780701189068
Publication Date: June 18, 2015
Pages: 376
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Chatto & Windus

Sara is 28 and has never been outside Sweden - except in the (many) books she reads. When her elderly penfriend Amy invites her to come and visit her in Broken Wheel, Iowa, Sara decides it's time. But when she arrives, there's a twist waiting for her - Amy has died. Finding herself utterly alone in a dead woman's house in the middle of nowhere was not the holiday Sara had in mind.

But Sara discovers she is not exactly alone. For here in this town so broken it's almost beyond repair are all the people she's come to know through Amy's letters: poor George, fierce Grace, buttoned-up Caroline and Amy's guarded nephew Tom.

Sara quickly realises that Broken Wheel is in desperate need of some adventure, a dose of self-help and perhaps a little romance, too. In short, this is a town in need of a bookshop.

I have a lot of thoughts about this book, all swirling around in my head avoiding cohesiveness.

This is not a gripping or exciting book and it isn’t a faced-paced one either.  This is a slow moving book and I suspect it’s appeal is going to be limited to those readers who have more than a little bit of the characters inside themselves.

I’m one of those readers; as much as my RL friends would say I’m outspoken and intolerant of crap, a lot of me shares a lot with the Broken Wheel characters, or I have at some point in my life.  So while I can’t say this book emotionally moved me or cause me to think Profound Thoughts, I did connect with it and enjoy the story.

3 things that nagged at me:

1.  As lovely as the idea of sharing/selling Amy’s books might be, all I could think about was ‘who inherited those books, and are they ok with you liquidating the estate?!?’  I’m assuming it’s Tom, since no other relatives are ever mentioned, but never once is it brought up.  What’s the Swedish word for probate?

2.  They misspelled Jane Austen’s Sanditon (Sandition).

3.  I forgot the third thing, dammit.  Obviously something huge.

On a side note, my copy is a UK edition, so the translation from the original Swedish used UK words and idioms, which I thought was kind of funny for a story set in the middle of corn-field Iowa.

All in all, a book I enjoyed.