Rory writes: I've got customer envy
Backstory manager Rory McNeill wants to see the shop through your eyes
Team pick of the week
Rory recommends: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Piranesi is exquisitely strange. It’s laced with myth and magical realism, but with Clarke’s footnotes and Piranesi’s own forensic diary taking, it feels like a lost historical document. Piranesi himself is deeply pure and good-natured. You’ll want to protect him from harm.
Piranesi lives in a labyrinthine house which conceals another world. Piranesi’s world. Tides move through the rooms. Clouds stalk the upper halls. Thousands of statues line the walls. The house takes care of him, he thinks, so he takes care of it. Then he finds evidence of another visitor, and his world might shatter.
You’ll get lost in the mystery, so revel in the not knowing - that’s where Clarke wants you. — Rory
Our bestsellers this week
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
Send Nudes by Saba Sams
Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
The Trees by Percival Everett
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
In the first in an occasional series of guest posts, Backstory manager Rory McNeill writes…
SOME HAVE RUSTIC wooden shelves holding up their walls. Ours are a vibrant royal blue. Some have windows displaying books in great piles. Ours allow passers-by to see through to readers nestled in cosy armchairs. I know these things about our lovely bookshop - we see it everyday. So, why can’t I decide what Backstory feels like?
I’ve been trying to answer this question since Tom and I set up shop. I’ve also convinced him to let me pen this week’s newsletter in the name of answering it, and giving him the day off after his recent media frenzy (Radio 4, The Bookseller, the i).
But, four months in, it’s hard to view it through fresh eyes, and I realise I’ve developed customer envy. I want to know what it feels like to see Backstory when you haven’t placed every book meticulously where it belongs.
I’ve seen Backstory as a stripped-out tile shop, a work in progress - I made trips to Balham in September to see every new lick of blue paint - and I’ve seen it become a bookshop; home to 3,000 books, presented in a way we thought made sense.
To see beyond this, I borrow the spring in a customer’s step when they browse our wall of top picks. I plant myself in their shoes, as a baritone voice declares how wonderful it is to have a bookshop in Balham once again. I clock every parent and child sharing a story in our kid’s corner, sitting cosily in the yellow hoop. This piece of architecture we’ve also seen used as a slide, or a skating ramp. I enjoy the panicked look a parent might give me as I smile and nod, that’s what it’s there for.
I bask in the atmosphere that emerges, sometimes out of nowhere, when all the seats at our bar are full and a chorus of book chatter fills the room. This same group might then fall silent, bury their heads in their books, nursing a glass of wine or - lately - hot chocolate. Backstory is every troop of friends meeting at our bar who, once they’re caught up, trade savage one-line book reviews as they scout the tables, wine in hand. Sorry if we’re being loud, they say. That’s what we’re here for!
The shop fizzes with energy when we have music events and welcome authors to talk. It is a bookshop that is inherently about people; my smiley teammates, our customers, both regular and irregular. A customer once asked Tom to see ‘the book that made your colleague cry,’ after I’d explained dramatically how The Song of Achilles wrecked me that week. As my university tutors would hammer into me: place is character. Balham brings its character to Backstory in spades.
I have played the role of customer. I mean really, physically, not just when I emailed the shop on the team’s busiest day of the Christmas season to order a book (they told me to BUGGER OFF in their reply). Even on that side of the till, though, I couldn’t help rearranging the tables, nudging a few face-outs into place. I’m not sure that I ever will.
For me, Backstory is both a bookshop and a hefty to-do list. It’s ever-changing and constantly surprising. Maybe I’ll just continue to build the image of it, piece by piece, and await the result. I’m rather fond of how the image is turning out. In the meantime, I’ll look forward to what surprises our bookshop has in store - be they a cross-legged crowd singing in unison, or the moment when that author says yes to doing an event - and I’ll enjoy the fact that I get to concoct some of them.