#newlove#singlemom#drama#romance The Situation: Esme Garland is a young British woman currently residing in New York City while pursuing her PhD in art history at Columbia. For the most part she is your typical grad student living in the Big Apple. She's attending Columbia on a scholarship and resides in a modest studio apartment on Broadway in Manhattan. She even landed and incredibly wealthy boyfriend, Mitchell, and has become good friends with her across-the-hall photographer neighbor, Stella. Being an art history major, Esme often stops by a local used bookstore called The Owl and has even become fairly friendly with the regular employees. Esme's life, while somewhat busy, is in order, and she likes it that way. The Problem: One day she asks Mitchell to meet her because she has something important to tell him. Turns out, he has something important to tell her too. He's decided to break up with her because he doesn't think their sex life is exciting enough. Which is a shame really, since Esme was going to tell Mitchell that she is pregnant, and he is most certainly the father. Now Esme is single, in school on a scholarship, in the US on a student visa, so she can't legally get a job, and pregnant. Fortunately, she is able to get a job at The Owl, as the owner, George, agrees to pay her under the table. And even though her shifts at the store only add to the busyness of her life, the store and the relationships she makes there will be a strange sort of stabilizing and supporting force for Esme. Even the regular homeless men that come by end up being a source of comfort. There is potential for Esme to be okay. And when Mitchell decides to have a change of heart and wants Esme back, it seems things will be okay, until it becomes clear that being with Mitchell does not bring the order to her life that she desires. Genre, Themes, History: This is a fiction novel set in modern-day New York City, with a young British college student as the first-person narrator. At times Esme is naive, immature, foolish, desperate, needy, self-righteous, and completely blind to the obvious. But she is also incredibly smart, and sweet, and ultimately wants to help people and do the right thing, even if it is unpopular. Most of her unpopular decisions aren't even about her pregnancy, but instead are about her experiences at The Owl and its employees and its patrons. There is quite a bit of discussion regarding the plight of the modern-day bookstore, especially the used bookstore, with the ever-growing popularity of devices such as the Kindle and iPad, not to mention the ease with which people can order real books at a discounted rate off of Amazon, and with those come a guarantee that no one has taken notes already in the margins. In the acknowledgments, Meyler admitted that the bookstore she describes here in The Bookstore does not actually look anything like the one she frequents that is currently at Broadway and 80th, Westsider Books. But I am sure every reader of this book can picture their own version of the store that they have come across in real life, either in their own home town or in their travels.