my local london book shop tour
on the resurgence of independent booksellers
Over the weekend The New York Times reported that independent bookshops are booming in America. Over three hundred new ones have opened in the past couple of years to meet the growing demand for “real recommendations from real people.”
It’s brilliant news of course, and if my patch of North West London is anything to go by, the micro-trend is a trans-Atlantic one too. Kensal Rise, where I live, is served by Queen’s Park Books, a sanctuary of calm in the middle of the buzzing Salusbury high street. My memoir was published last week in the UK and in the handful of years since my last book, I’ve noticed a huge anecdotal shift in consumer behaviour among my many reader friends — almost all of whom pre-ordered from their local shop this time round. QPB was sold out within a few days.
So much was lost in those grim years of the early part of this century when thousands of bookshops closed due to market forces and the rise of big data. I remember a general feeling of helplessness in the industry as a whole. In light of this, it’s both heartening and empowering to see how a thoughtful grassroots change really can restore small local businesses and make viable within communities in the longterm. Whenever I hear good news about independent book shops I think of Curiosity House Books, the bookshop in my mother’s village of Creemore Ontario. Several years back, when it was on the brink of closure, local residents banded together to keep the book shop open. Through a combination of volunteer work and pre-ordering, they managed to succeed and it remains a thriving part of the village to this day.
To celebrate the restoration of the local independent book shop, I recently went on a little signing and shopping tour of North West London, accompanied by my gorgeous publicist Kate McQuaid (that’s her with the ridiculously cute jumpsuit and nose-crinkle smile above). First we visited West End Lane Books in Cricklewood where we had a lovely chat with Chris who told us all about the ownership history of the shop, including the fact that Queen’s Park Books is in fact its sister shop, which was news to me. I walked out with a copy of Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout, a purchase I justified as after-the-fact research since there’s a Lucy Barton plot thread woven into my new memoir.
I was also thrilled to learn that West End Lane Books is toying with the idea of opening another location in Harlesden a wildly diverse and historically scruffy-around-the-edges ‘hood to the west of Kensal whose High Street would be transformed by an independent bookseller. Starbucks would never be so gutsy. Local estate agents will be turning cartwheels when and if it happens.
Next up was a North London institution, Primrose Hill Books in (you guessed it) Primrose Hill where I met and chatted to the lovely and camera shy, Jessica. I’ve long been enchanted by this unpretentious jumble of a shop, located as it is on one of the poshest “up-and-came” strips in North London, just down the road from an NK Space and a Lemonia, a festive and famously clattery Greek restaurant. There is absolutely nothing “curated” or try-hard about PRHB — it’s just a single small room with floor to ceiling shelves and a big table in the middle stacked to the rafters with books.
Jessica and I somehow ended up in a long discussion about The Magus by John Fowles, which I’d recently reread and found ingenious for the first six hundred pages, and after that utterly ludicrous and confounding. Like me, she remembered it fondly but she said she’d recently recommended it to a customer who later came back and said “This book has not aged well.” The Magus was a massive bestseller at the time of publication but apparently John Fowles himself reportedly hated it in retrospect — in the way that Neil Young is said to loathe Heart of Gold. One of the curses of fame, I suppose, is having one of your least favourite works eclipse everything else.
Jessica then informed me, rather thrillingly, that Primrose Hill Books was once Fowles’s local, back in the days when a jobbing novelist could afford to buy a house on Chalcot Square (can you imagine?). Apparently he used to pop in all the time and even donated a bunch of books from his personal collection after he died.
After that it was down to Notting Hill where Kate and I popped into the ever-swanky Lutyens & Rubinstein (pictured below) and had a fantastic chat with Caroline, the vivacious shopkeeper.
I’ve long admired the innovative design of this shop, which is also doubles as a respected London literary agency. The room is small but seems grand and expansive thanks to soaring ceilings and a set of galleries and balconies, an ingenious use of space. The whimsical display of floating origami made me want to linger all day.
Last but not least on the day-tour was my OG local, Queen’s Park Books where I had a fantastic conversation with Liam. We discussed the new post-pandemic renovation, which makes the shop seem about five times bigger and brighter. After that we moved on to Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, (a novel I’m still so obsessed with I will corner anyone who has read it and talk their face off for an hour). I walked out with Clarke’s first novel, the mouth-wateringly thick Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, which Liam assured me is equally as absorbing but in an entirely different way. Also it’s massive. I mean Dickens HUGE.
Does anyone else still love reading long novels, or is it only me? They have to be good, obviously, but surely that was always the case.
More soon — later alligator.
xxL