Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop

Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop
by Alba Donati, Elena Pala (translator)
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781399605519
Pages: 196
Genre: Books and Reading, Memoir
Publisher: Orion Books

The diary of a publicist-turned poet-turned bookseller who decided to open a tiny bookshop on the hills of the small village of Lucignana, Tuscany.

'Romano, I want to open a bookshop where I live.'
'Great. How many people are we talking about?'
'180.'
'Right, so if 180,000 people live there, then...'
'No, not 180,000, Romano. 180.'
'Alba... Have you lost your mind?'

Conversation between Alba Donati and Romano Montroni, former CEO of Italy's largest bookselling chain
Alba used to live a hectic life, working as a book publicist in Florence - a life that made her happy but also left her feeling like a woman constantly on the run.

So one day she decides go back to the small village in the Tuscan hills where she was born and open a tiny bookshop.
Alba's enterprise seems doomed from day one, but it surprisingly sparks the enthusiasm of many across Tuscany - and beyond. And after surviving a fire and the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, the 'Bookshop on the Hill' soon becomes a refuge and beacon for an ever-growing community of readers.

Meh.  I was expecting, and looking forward to, a diary about a ‘micro bookstore’ in a small village of 180 people in Tuscany.  Sort of like Sean Bythell’s books, only sunnier and happier.

Only about half the book is about the bookshop.  Those bits were good, as were the bits about some of the villagers.  But really, the bookshop just serves as a prop for  going off on tangents about the author’s childhood, her family, her philosophising, and her literary criticism about books I’ve never heard of, because most of them were poetry and I’m a troglodyte when it comes to poetry (the author herself is an Italian poet).

The book is supposed to be a diary of the first 6 months in 2021 and that’s the way it’s formatted, but there’s almost no adherence to this structure, as every entry Donati goes ‘off-date’ to talk about something else – how the bookstore got started, the fire that destroyed it only months after opening, it’s rebuilding, her childhood, etc.  Since the bookstore opened just months before the pandemic, the entires that touched on how that affected her bookstore and the village were interesting.  But all the interesting bits were just that: bits.  I craved more detail about the bookstore’s conception, creation, restoration, and operation.  I did not crave more information about the house she grew up in that didn’t have a bathroom, but about which I had to hear about a disquieting number of times.

It’s not a bad book, just not the book I was looking for.