Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: A Memoir of Friendship, Community, and the Uncommon Pleasure of a Good Book

Bonnie avatar reviewed on + 422 more book reviews


I read about this book somewhere and it looked so interesting, and it was. A couple, an older couple, wanted to settle somewhere and fulfill a dream, and one day it hit them, well, what the heck, if we don't do it now...

Thus they went way out on a limb and bought a big old house in the center of Big Stone Gap, Virginia and opened a used book store. Yes, THAT Big Stone Gap of the Adriana Trigiani's series. The Gap never had a bookstore, used or otherwise, and at last, here was one, but it was owned by folks from away. He, actually, was from Scotland. We know how all that can go, trying to get accepted in a small town when your great grandparents weren't first generation citizens, but this couple endeavored to persevere, and with lots of good ideas, and funny anecdotes, she tells us how they did it. That was the best part of the book. When she gets away from the people that make up The Gap, that made the bookstore what it became, the book gets draggy. Actually, she gets unnecessarily wordy. But those parts are worth suffering through to read about the rest, esp the veterans, and a fellow called Wee Willie. Recommended.