Normies and Bougies: My Review of Death of a Bookseller

Normally I open my reviews with a quick explanation of why I picked up the book in the first place, but in this case the question is: why wouldn't I? Death of a Bookseller is clearly designed to be a buzzy thriller for people who like books and want something slightly twisted to read on the beach. It is to book-loving millennials what The Girl on the Train was to wine moms and Gone Girl was to wives.  

Death of a Bookseller [Alice Slater] follows two employees at a Walthamstow branch of Spines (an obvious Waterstones expy). Roach, a serial killer-loving goth living in a world of 'normies', becomes immediately obsessed with Laura, a bougie (and dear god you will become familiar with that word), seemingly put-together hipster who has just joined the branch. Rebuffed by the true-crime hating Laura at every turn, Roach discovers Laura's connection to a famous serial killer and begins a campaign of stalking that pushes Laura ever closer to the edge. 

This has garnered all sorts of viral attention (helped by its bold cover and a huge 99p sale shortly after release), and the reviews are highly favourable. One of the booktubers I like most utterly raved about it, and they were not alone. This debut book is an official success and so I feel comfortable writing a negative review.

Because fam, it's got problems. Big ones.  

Like The Girl on the Train (which I hated a lot more this this) and Gone Girl (which I would have enjoyed more if I hadn't already known the twist), I spent much of the book deeply irritated by everyone in it, and increasingly convinced that whoever this book was targeted at, it wasn't me. 

But, on paper, I should be that target. I'm a woman, I have a book-blog, I've read or am at least familiar with the majority of books referenced, I've worked in retail, I live in London, and though I'm a little older than the Gen Z characters, I'm not that much older. I'm enough of a true crime addict to understand pretty much all of the references and podcasts, and online enough to know every type of social media video they watch. I should have felt a connection to these characters. Instead I felt like this book was aimed at the very readers the characters mock - the ones who carry the 'I heart books' totebag but like their reader image more than the actual reading. 

At one point I legitimately wondered if I wasn't straight enough for this book. Despite the marketing as a deadly obsession between women, it's a one-sided obsession and both characters are still attracted to men. In both cases, the straight relationships in this book are the most interesting. Eli - Laura's unavailable crush - is possibly the most likable character in the book, and though one rolls their eyes at his record-playing hipster posturing, her attraction to him is utterly understandable. 

Meanwhile Roach's love interest comes across as the possible Ian Brady to her Myra, but both she and the audience like him more as his ordinariness becomes evident. He's a 'bad boy' who likes the idea of kink more than engaging in it, who tries to get her poetry published as a surprise, who is willing to meet her mum and uncomplainingly go to her boring work party.  

For a book about an obsession between women, this is the least gay thing ever. While Roach's desire for Laura is at times sensuous (the opening paragraph is practically a love letter to Lolita), it's never sexual. It's hard to understand what she wants from Laura at all, except for an acknowledgement that they could be friends. That rather pathetic wish (even at Roach's most crazed, her big dream is for Laura to help her pick out a dress for a party) adds a sliver of pathetic sympathy to Roach's character, but it cannot justify or carry her behaviour.  

I've seen another reviewer reference Patricia Highsmith and it's an apt comparison. Her style favours characters who are intimately drawn to each other and subtle, barely there plots. Highsmith's Strangers on a Train has a similar dynamic between the two characters and it's as if the author tried to recreate that here. But Strangers on a Train works because of the implied sexual obsession and a genuine connecting event between the two men, meaning that the other character is not just an unwilling participant, but utterly trapped.

Here Laura is so immediately repulsed by Roach that any potential for connection is nixed. They aren't trapped together by any force stronger than a staffing rota. We know at once that Roach will never get what she's longing for - taking away the tension of any sort of development between the two while making Laura less interesting to the reader. It feels like the author was scared to let the two have any real conversation, in case it lessened the impact of the stalking. Instead Laura comes off as that person we've all worked with, who is the bubbly centre of their boring little work clique and an absolute stone-cold bitch to anyone different than them. 

It's hard to work out if we are meant to like Laura or not. We are certainly meant to feel sorry for her loss and her secret loneliness, but it's difficult to watch her striding around life with the sort of Instagram-filter positivity usually only seen from Meg Ryan at the start of You've Got Mail. She frets about money while having expensive tastes, and complains about the mildew and snails in her flat while living alone in London on a shop assistant's salary through sheer luck. We all balked when Bridget Jones did it twenty years ago. 

When her landlord discovers how much the place is actually worth and she is given notice, it seems like that's meant to be the very worst possible thing to happen, rather than a dose of the reality literally ever reader lives in. Yes, we understand that her character is all image and suffering underneath, but her shallowness runs deep. 

Roach is no better. She's certainly the most interesting of the two, but her motives become increasingly muddled. The author doesn't say that the character is autistic, but she is uncomfortably coded that way. 

Roach can't follow social cues, has no understanding of boundaries, copies others' clothes and mannerisms in an attempt to be liked, has fixed food preferences (this book could have been sponsored by Strongbow Dark Fruits), and obsesses over her niche interest without understanding that others may be either uninterested or offended by it. Without the suggestion of other reasons for her obsession - either sexual or emotional - it feels disgustingly like the author is suggesting that her actions stem from those problems. 

A lot of Roach's supposed motive is her love of true-crime, a debate that is one of the selling points of the book. As someone whose own true-crime interest has bordered on unhealthy, I have been increasingly pulling away from it, and was more than willing to get my hands dirty with an uncomfortable debate. 

A conflict between the worst type of true-crime fangirl and someone whose mother was killed by a famous serial killer should have been utterly fascinating. Instead both Laura and Roach are utterly one-note in their love/hatred of it, with Laura obviously having the understandable moral high-ground. Laura thinks that we should all be focusing on the victims and Roach attends multiple live shows of what is obviously a My Favourite Murder ripoff (a podcast that makes even my skin crawl with embarrassment.) 

Yet it's Laura who comes across as the biggest hypocrite - her poetry is based on true crime books and her eventual 'healing memoir' about her mother's murder profits off that very industry while pretending to be above it. 

It is half-heartedly discussed by others - mainly in regards to how true-crime should be shelved - and never gets beyond a it exploits women/it's racist/it's copaganda level of debate. It is mentioned as little more than a recent fad, one that is on the wane, with no seeming knowledge of the subject and it's historical relevance. Like Notes on an Execution, I was left with the feeling that the author liked the idea of the true-crime debate but didn't understand it. And like that book, I get the feeling that the author doesn't (yet) have the nuance for the conversation they are trying to have. 

While I have strong criticisms, there are valid reasons to like this book. The references are detailed and fully immerse you in the day to day life - Roach's smug acceptance of the Americanisms in a podcast, or Laura zoning out to lifestyle videos. Roach's stalking leads to all sorts of tiny details - the fresh vegetables stacked on mouldy ones, an unwashed glass with dried smoothie inside, the watermelon bubble bath - which feel intimate and invasive without being salacious. 

The friendships and relationships the characters also feel real, and scenes of the staff hanging out in a bar where they can get a £1 can of beer, where shots are bought and then ignored when the moment passes, are all too familiar. Many readers are enchanted by the 'behind the scenes' look at a major bookshop, though it honestly looked the same as my experience at M&S's food hall, only marginally warmer. The other minor shop characters are well drawn, with likeable hardass Sharona being true-to-life, and resistant-to-change Martin all-too-believable. 

We do need to talk about the overuse of normie and bougie though. Normie is a stereotypical goth term rarely used beyond the angst of puberty (see also 'prep' which my goth best friend used viciously at 15 even though we lived in Salford and no one knew what a prep was). Roach uses it to distraction, which is telling of her character's black-and-white view of the people around her, but it grates after a while. 

Bougie is a ubiquitous term now - I assume originating from bourgeois - and not to sound like a grandma but I genuinely want to stab anyone who uses it in the face. Even people I love. I don't mind kids these days, with their iphones and their slang, but bougie can fuck all the way off. Unfortunately the author trots it out a lot, as Laura lives the bougie-ist life imaginable. 

In the end, I hoped that both booksellers ended up dead.