Hello,

This week, our book club is discussing Evie Woods' The Lost Bookshop, which features dual timelines, settings in Dublin and Paris, a romance and a magical bookshop.

In Editor's Choice, we review Marie-Helene Bertino's Beautyland, centering on the mysterious Adina, an extraordinary girl growing up in Philadelphia who believes she is an alien sent to Earth to observe humans.

Plus, we bring you a "beyond the book" article relating to Celina Baljeet Basra's Happy that spotlights Barikamà, an Italian co-operative producing organic yogurt and vegetables and providing non-exploitative jobs for immigrant workers.

You can also explore more books in our Italy category, and enjoy a new Wordplay!

With best wishes,

The BookBrowse Team

"I adored this book. One of the best stories I have read in the last year or so. Many of my favorite topics are intertwined, particularly the comfort of bookshops, old manuscripts from beloved authors, and mixed in is more than a little mystery, secrets, wonder and magical circumstances...what's not to love?" —dianac

"I really liked this book. ... The characters were multi-dimensional, and the story intriguing. I enjoyed figuring out the deeper character connections before the end. I’m very glad to have spent the time reading it." —gerrieb

"I loved the book and look forward to reading more by Evie Woods. It’s easy to enjoy a book that has dual timelines involving bookstores, a little bit of magic and characters on the verge of great change." —angelaw

This issue of The BookBrowse Review contains reviews and "beyond the book" articles for 16 titles, including The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac by Louise Kennedy, Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and Dazzling by Chikodili Emelumadu.

We also bring you previews of upcoming releases, book club recommendations and more.

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Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino tells the story of a precocious girl named Adina. Living with her low-income single mother in Philadelphia, Adina faces all the trials of childhood and coming of age while feeling deeply disconnected from those around her.

Our reading pleasure is fraught with pangs of sympathy for the extraordinarily sensitive girl. People's mouth sounds aggravate her so much that popcorn eaters in theatres ruin movies for her. "When it was time to decide the official food of movie-watching, human beings did not go for fig Newtons or caramel, foods that are silent, but popcorn, the loudest sound on Earth," she observes.

Adina explains her sense of isolation by saying she is an alien sent to Earth to report on human behavior. She tells her superiors that she wants to meet others who were sent to Earth to take notes, and the narration stays so close to her inner world that we don't know what people think of her or whether she has some kind of mental illness. We're forced to take her as she sees herself. ... continued

A radish farm worker in Celina Baljeet Basra's Happy relays a tale of injustice at his previous job: a group of exploited immigrants, an attack, and an uprising. This story is one we might imagine to be derived from a compilation of worker mistreatments, but the specifics are based on a true story of immigrant fruit pickers in Rosarno, in southern Calabria, Italy, where racist attacks by locals in 2010 sparked an uprising of hundreds of workers. One of these workers, Suleiman Diara, left Rosarno and moved to Rome, where he and a business partner founded Barikamà ("resilience" in Bambara), a workers' co-operative. "I had to find a way to stop being exploited while being financially independent," Diara said in an interview with FairPlanet.

Barikamà started with artisanal yogurt production, then moved into organic vegetable production. The co-op's warehouse is headquartered in Pigneto, a historic working-class neighborhood of Rome, and its production facilities are based at Casale di Martignano, a farmhouse around 22 miles outside of the city, where the group entered into agreements with the owners to rent yogurt production machinery and farm the property. ... continued

Happy by Celina Baljeet Basra, featured above and appearing in the latest BookBrowse e-zine, is just one of 70+ books in our Italy category, where you'll find a variety of recommended books, both fiction and non-fiction, ranging in setting from the beautiful Italian countryside to the historic streets of Rome.

This is one of 100+ themed categories you can explore on BookBrowse to find the perfect read for your book club or yourself. Members can access all categories and filter to narrow their browsing, while non-members have limited access.

Solve our Wordplay puzzle to reveal a well-known expression, and be entered to win a one-year membership to BookBrowse!

The answer to the last Wordplay: L M, L My D

Meaning: If you love someone you should accept everything and everyone they love.

This expression is first recorded in a late 15th century book of miscellany, and is also found in John Heywood's 1546 book of proverbs. Similar proverbs can be found in other languages including French and Spanish. ... continued

BookBrowse Highlights is one of our four free newsletters. We also offer Publishing This Week every Sunday, and Book Club News and Librarian News monthly.

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