BOOKSThe Christmas Bookshop
by Jenny Colgan
Sphere, £14.99W
hatever else
proves in short
supply this
Christmas, it won’t
be the kind of
festive romantic fiction designed to
be a winter warmer for its primarily
female readership. By my perhaps
conservative reckoning, there are
approximately 50 new novels around
in this category. Nonetheless, it’s
hard to imagine any doing a better
job than The Christmas Bookshop—
where, once again, Jenny Colgan
manages the neat trick of staying
utterly faithful to the conventions
of the genre, while also smuggling
in some sharp comedy and keen
social observation.Carmen, like many a romcom
heroine, is approaching 30 and not
feeling good about herself. Single
and working a dead-end job in a dying
Scottish town, she keeps hearing from
her mother about how well her sister
Sofia is doing as a high-flying (and thin)
Edinburgh lawyer with three children.
Worse, when that dead-end job
finally goes, it’s Sofia who comes to
the rescue. Reluctantly, Carmen
moves into her sister’s gorgeous house
and starts the job Sofia has arranged for
her in a second-hand bookshop. The
shop has potential but, as chaotically
run by its owner, will close if Carmen
can’t turn it around by Christmas, now
a matter of weeks away. So what could
possibly go right?December Fiction
A cosy Christmas read is on the cards for
our December fiction pick
James Walton is a
book reviewer and
broadcaster, and has
written and presented
17 series of the BBC
Radio 4 literary quiz
The Write Stuff122 • DECEMBER 2021