The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted
A Novel
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4.1 • 13 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Can one unlikely bookshop heal two broken souls?
"Beautifully written . . . Full of insight into the nature of tragedy, love, and redemption."--Garth Stein
"A poignant journey of unthinkable loss, love, and the healing capacity of the written word."--Ellen Keith
It is 1968 in rural Australia and lonely Tom Hope can't make heads or tails of Hannah Babel. Newly arrived from Hungary, Hannah is unlike anyone he's ever met--she's passionate, artistic, and fiercely determined to open sleepy Hometown's first bookshop. Despite the fact that Tom has read only one book in his life, the two soon discover an astonishing spark. Recently abandoned by an unfaithful wife, Tom dares to believe that he might make Hannah happy. But Hannah is a haunted woman. Twenty-four years earlier, she had been marched to the gates of Auschwitz.
Perfect for fans of The Little Paris Bookshop and We Were the Lucky Ones, The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted cherishes the power of love, literature, and forgiveness to transform our lives, and--if we dare allow them--to mend our broken hearts.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Travelling from Auschwitz during World War II to the Australian outback in the late ’60s, Robert Hillman’s heartrending novel ponders the ache of life after love. The book’s fictional bookstore is run by Holocaust survivor Hannah, who immigrated to a rural Aussie community more than a decade after losing her husband and son in a concentration camp; Hannah’s unlikely beau is farmer Tom Hope, whose wife ditched him and separated him from the boy he was raising as his son. Hillman movingly captures the quirks of small-town life and the terror and tenderness of letting someone in after you’ve been blinded by heartbreak and grief.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hillman (The Boy in the Green Suit) offers an uplifting exploration of how people rise above tragedy to find joy. It's 1968 in an Australian backwater town, and Tom Hope's wife, Trudy, has disappeared, only to return a year later, pregnant with another man's child. Tom grows to love the boy, Peter, but then Trudy abandons both when Peter is almost three, returning two years later to take her son from Tom and, shortly thereafter, send him divorce papers. After Hannah Babel who survived Auschwitz but lost her entire family, including her husband and young son, to the concentration camps comes to town, she hires Tom to fix up the bookstore she's set on running, and the two of them he, a calm workman, she an older, feisty intellectual each with their separate anguish, find common ground and marry. Then Peter, still a child, reappears in Tom's life, forcing Hannah to question whether she could allow herself to love another child, and Tom to potentially have to choose between his marriage and his love for the boy he considers a son. Hillman's novel is an impressive, riveting tale of how two disparate and well-drawn people recover from soul-wrenching grief and allow themselves to truly love again.
