Serenely Beautiful

Aria’s Travelling Bookshop by Rebecca Raisin is the most delightful contemporary novel that I absolutely adored. It is the second book in The Travelling Shops series but can be read as a stand-alone.

This is a book about love, and grief, and life. It is a book about friendship, and travelling, and reading. It is a book that will completely take over your life for a few hours as you never want it to end.

We join the lead characters who live out of their camper vans, selling various items. The leading lady sells books and is passionate about them. She is incredibly easy to empathise with, with her love of reading, of browsing bookshops, and of sniffing books (who hasn’t?)

The reader follows the characters from busy London to the sunny, carefree South of France in Summer. We can almost ‘feel’ the heat, ‘see’ the landscape, and imagine the local food and wine.

Grief is a journey. “It’s a process… And the only way to get through it is to keep moving forward… But you can’t outrun grief.” Each person has to navigate grief in the best way they can. “I feel so robbed and bitter at the world. I try so hard not to fall down that dark hole but sometimes it just swallows me up.” Grief brings out many emotions – including guilt. Guilt at being alive and learning to live again. “Stop letting guilt drive you.” Guilt is a negative emotion and we need to cast it out.

We can feel loneliness in a crowd. “I feel a pang of loneliness despite being surrounded by people who care for me.”

A character ‘feels’ the love reaching her from beyond the grave as she is given her husband’s diary that he wrote just for her. Whilst it is sad, it is also cathartic and healing.

I loved the fact that the leading lady immersed herself in books. I enjoyed the paragraphs where she imagined her story.

Aria’s Travelling Bookshop was beautifully written. It leaves the reader feeling serene, calm and loved.

JULIA WILSON