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Summary
Summary
A provocative and hauntingly powerful debut novel reminiscent of Sliding Doors, The Bookseller follows a woman in the 1960s who must reconcile her reality with the tantalizing alternate world of her dreams.
Nothing is as permanent as it appears . . .
Denver, 1962: Kitty Miller has come to terms with her unconventional single life. She loves the bookshop she runs with her best friend, Frieda, and enjoys complete control over her day-to-day existence. She can come and go as she pleases, answering to no one. There was a man once, a doctor named Kevin, but it didn't quite work out the way Kitty had hoped.
Then the dreams begin.
Denver, 1963: Katharyn Andersson is married to Lars, the love of her life. They have beautiful children, an elegant home, and good friends. It's everything Kitty Miller once believed she wanted--but it only exists when she sleeps.
Convinced that these dreams are simply due to her overactive imagination, Kitty enjoys her nighttime forays into this alternate world. But with each visit, the more irresistibly real Katharyn's life becomes. Can she choose which life she wants? If so, what is the cost of staying Kitty, or becoming Katharyn?
As the lines between her worlds begin to blur, Kitty must figure out what is real and what is imagined. And how do we know where that boundary lies in our own lives?
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In 1962, Kitty wakes in Katharyn's bed next to Katharyn's husband, Lars. Down the hall are Katharyn's children: Missy, Mitch, and Michael. In the mirror, Katharyn's reflection looks exactly like Kitty's, and Kitty is able to recall specific memories and behaviors of Katharyn's with disturbing accuracy. But Kitty and Katharyn are not the same-Katharyn is just the woman Kitty becomes in her dreams. In reality, Kitty is single, childless, and owns a floundering bookstore with her best friend, Frieda. She has pursuits and interests that Katharyn's life has no room for. Initially believing that Katharyn is a figment of her imagination, a pleasant dream showing what married life could have been like, Kitty identifies the one moment that prevented her life from becoming Katharyn's. Kitty's uncertainty about which woman's reality is real consumes her. Swanson masterfully crafts both Kitty's and Katharyn's worlds, leaving open the question of which of them is real until the final pages. Swanson's evocative novel freshly considers the timeless question, "What if?" (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
The cat-owning spinster co-owner of a struggling independent bookstore begins to experience more-than-vivid dreams of an alternate life in this debut novel.Book lover Kitty Miller appears to have it all. She's an independent woman in early 1960s Denver with a passion for books and a modest inheritance that helped her open a small bookstore with her best friend, Frieda. Though the store just squeaks by, and though she's in her 30s and still single, she finds herself granted "an element of freedom and quirkiness that other women our age don't have." But Kitty's simple life is interrupted as she finds herself dreaming at night of a husband named Lars, a robust sex life and children she adores. All this is very strange, and Kitty starts to doubt the choices she's made in her daytime life, preferring the seemingly perfect housewife-life of her dreams. She can't quite believe her dream life, though, and finds herself puzzled over how she knows how to take care of children or run a household. She also discovers her dream life is not as perfect as she first thought: Her parents, who are very much alive in her real life, have died in a plane crash, and one of her children is autistic (which is dealt with awkwardly, as are the historical aspects of the novel); she's also lost the bookstore and Frieda's friendship. There are mysteries galore, and like Nancy Drew, Kitty sets out to solve the case and find the links between her two worlds, as memories from each surprise and interrupt her. Unfortunately, Kitty is too perfect and nave in both her worlds to be very interesting. And for a novel about a bibliophile, there's little about books beyond an adolescent interest. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
By day, Kitty Miller is a cat-loving, free-spirited single woman who co-owns downtown Denver's Sisters Bookstore with her best friend, Frieda. By night, Kitty enters a dream world in which she is known as Katharyn Andersson, wife of Lars, mother of triplets Missy, Mitch, and the autistic Michael. It's a sleek, 1960s suburban life, filled with maids and nannies, Cadillacs and cocktail parties, in which people tiptoe gently around her, obliquely referring to the hard times she's recently suffered. Kitty's not too concerned about these condolences because this is only a dream, right? When she wakes up, she'll go back to her bookstore and best friend and eagerly await her parents' return from their exotic anniversary trip to Honolulu. But as Kitty finds her daily life increasingly influenced by events and people from her dream world, it becomes harder to know just what is real and what is imagined. Dexterously traversing past and present, fact and fiction, Swanson's clever first novel ingeniously explores the inventive ways the human spirit copes with trauma.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Starred Review. With her freshly painted sunny yellow bedroom in 1962 Denver, Kitty Miller leads a content if solitary life. Running a bookshop with her best friend, Frieda, is a welcome break from teaching school. Everything about Kitty's life seems benignly commonplace until she begins waking up in another bedroom, in another life: a life in which she is another version of herself. She wakes up as Katharyn Andersson in 1963 Denver, married to Lars, a man who had answered a personal ad 1962 Kitty Miller had placed-but 1962 Lars never showed up for their date. Katharyn and Lars have three children and move in a sphere Kitty doesn't know about. As Kitty investigates the two worlds of Katharyn and Kitty, she sees parallels and choices, trade-offs and sacrifices. VERDICT This is a stunner of a debut novel, astonishingly tight and fast paced. The 1960s tone is elegant and even, and Kitty/Katharyn's journey is intriguing, redolent with issues of family, independence, friendship, and free will. This will especially resonate with fans of the movie Sliding Doors and the authors Anna Quindlen and Anita Shreve. [See Prepub Alert, 9/15/14.]-Julie Kane, Sweet Briar Coll. Lib., VA (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.