The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted

February 25, 2019
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. Agent: David Forrer, InkWell Management.

February 22, 2018
In this tender, emotive novel, the lives of sheep farmer Tom Hope and Hungarian Holocaust survivor Hannah Babel collide in a small Victorian country town in the 1960s. Hannah’s exuberance, colourful charm and love of literature paint her in stark contrast to the community, and Tom’s simple existence couldn’t be further from Hannah’s traumatic fight for survival. Both are broken, lonely and navigating the absence of those they have lost. Both also have complicated backstories, and their painful memories create waves of tension in the fledgling relationship. Robert Hillman is the author of the novel Joyful and the memoir The Boy in the Green Suit, among others. In this book, his graceful prose skilfully depicts both the horror of Auschwitz and the placidity of the Australian bush. In Tom and Hannah, he has created tangible, highly likable characters whose suffering will tug on readers’ heartstrings and arouse sympathy, well after the final page. While this tale contains darkness and heartache, they are accompanied by truth and love, and ultimately, hope, and the human capacity to overcome. This sensitive, enthralling story should appeal to a wide spectrum of readers and is destined to become a favourite. Joanne Shiells is a freelance editor and writer, and a former editor of Books+Publishing