Shopgirls

Shopgirls / Jessica Anya Blau
NY: Mariner, c2025.
272 p.

I'm not sure how I heard about this book, but it's a shop novel, and it's set in the 80s. I do love both of those things! So I gave it a try. I thought it was a good read, but not especially striking as a whole. It had the atmosphere of an earnest after-school special in some ways, particularly the conclusion. Maybe that was the 80s influence. But the emotional depth of this novel does feel more YAish to me. 

Zippy is a young woman who wants to go to college but has no guidance as to how to do that. So she gets a job at the San Francisco department store I. Magnin instead. She's in the dress department and has to learn everything on the fly; she's a very young person with little experience of this world (she rotates between her 3 thrift store outfits, saving to buy something from the store eventually). She turns out to be a good salesperson, succeeding wildly which of course stirs up jealousy and someone tries to  sabotage her work. She is cast out for a while, but everything comes out perfectly in the end. That is one of the reasons I felt this was more of a nostalgic fairytale than realism.  

What did I like? The setting was interesting, the time period was my jam - even though some of the cultural references were tucked in a bit clumsily, just to get them in there. I loved the discussion of the actual clothes and the designers, and in parts this reminded me of one of my favourite store reads, Women in Black by Madeleine St John. But. 

What didn't I like? Zippy's name, for starters, it feels so heavy handedly quirky. Her new roommate Rachel, who is older and really into dieting culture, which is just presented as Rachel saying things that are never challenged, like her suggestion to only eat every second day. What? The ridiculousness of some of the things Zippy does at work -- making paper dolls of all her coworkers, for example. And the story arc disappointed me, the easiness of the plot conclusion felt unsatisfying and led to that after-school-special vibe. 

I didn't hate it but I felt it really wasn't as exciting or 80s drenched as I was hoping for. I'd say okay for a quick read when you don't want to be too challenged by anything dark or hopeless. 

Business As Usual, by Jane Oliver

Business As Usual / Jane Oliver & Ann Stafford
Handheld Press, 2020, c1933.
242 p.

Now here's a store novel that is not twee or earnest; it's funny and mostly realistic, with mentions of working conditions of regular women, and the perils that face single women in the 30s. 

This is an epistolary novel, a story told in letters by our heroine Hilary Fane to a variety of her friends and family, with cute drawings appended to many. It faintly reminds me of Daddy-Long-Legs in its style, except that there is no creepy love story between schoolgirl and sugar daddy in this one. 

Hilary has her BA and is engaged to up-and-coming doctor Basil. They won't be able to marry for a year, so she's decided that rather than moon about at home waiting for him, she's going to see if she can support herself for the year and get a feel for 'real life'. She goes to London, and can't seem to get a position as easily as she thought she would. With her savings diminishing quickly, she considers giving up, but then lucks into a position in the lending library records department at Everyman's (a department store heavily reminiscent of Selfridges). 

Despite her being so self-deprecating in her letters, she quickly moves from clerk to sales associate on the floor (as she baldly states, BAs or Titles are the key to the better roles). She's not great at sales due to her lack of math skills, so ends up in the front end of the lending library where she goes gung-ho with reorganizing and streamlining processes, much to the (not unexpected) ire of long-time employees. But Hilary has an in - she's also begun to write notes and memorandum back and forth to Everyman's head manager, who likes her gusto (and most likely her youth and beauty as well). Basil's letters, in comparison, show him off more and more as a pompous social climber, heartless and self-involved. 

There is quite a bit of humour in this, as Hilary writes to Basil and her family about her living conditions, work drama, the sudden appearance in the Lending Library of her eccentric rich aunt (causing quite a stir), and so forth. But there is also some quite serious commentary, on the poor scrimping typists she first works with, who are all much older than she is and sharing rooms to get by even so. And with no outlook for anything different. There is a woman of her own age working there, too, who is having a romance with one of the male employees out front; but she gets into trouble and he immediately drops her. Hilary tries to help, appealing to Basil for assistance in finding a nursing home which will remove the trouble (he of course is appalled). Although Hilary herself has nothing to worry about in the future department, she has empathy for those she sees around her, beginning to understand the way other women have to move in the world. 

I really like store novels, and also love epistolary novels, and this one was very satisfying in both respects. It's really about a working life, and the letters are varied and amusing, while actually feeling like letters (and notes, and memoranda). I'd definitely recommend this one if you enjoy those things as well, along with a splash of social realism and romanticism - those things sitting beside one another surprisingly well in this novel.

Babbacombe's

Babbacombe's / Susan Scarlett
Dean Street Press, 2022, c1941.
211 p.

After reading the charming, light Clothes-Pegs by Susan Scarlett recently, I was really looking forward to this one -- it's a department store novel, which I usually really enjoy. Sadly, I was a bit disappointed in this one. It felt a little treacly, a little bit Grace Livingston Hill-ish with its focus on the good daughter and the racy cousin competing for a man's attention. 

The cover is fabulous and the parts about the workings of the store were engaging and interesting to read about. But our heroine Beth Carson is a bit sappy, with the perfect home life with well-meaning, scrimping parents, younger siblings who need Beth's extra mothering, and an ability to shine with extreme goodness. 

After she is introduced as leaving school with the highest awards, she goes directly to work to help support her family. As her father is a long-time employee of the department store Babbacombe's, he gets her a place in the shop. She, of course, is excellent at her work, attentive and a rule-follower, and her department heads are impressed with her. On her first day of work, however, she gets stuck in a lift with a young man who doesn't seem to have much of a work ethic or character, and ends up telling him off. Of course she later discovers that he is David Babbacombe, son of the owner; what she doesn't know is that her earnest moralizing in the elevator has turned his life around and he's now decided to work his way up in the firm. 

To add a little drama to the story, Beth's cousin Dulcie (brought up loosely by a maiden aunt) has come to live with them in London, as it's time for her to find some work of her own. She also gets a job at Babbacombe's -- as an elevator operator -- but she's the opposite of Beth. She loves to flirt and is a bit vulgar, with her eye on the big prize at all times. It's almost the fairy tale duo of good and bad stepsisters, one having diamonds and pearls falling from her lips, the other one with toads. There isn't a lot of nuance here; we know who we are supposed to cheer for! 

As a tale of a lower middle class family trying to keep it together, and hard work and moral rectitude being rewarded, you couldn't ask for more. The store bits were great fun, even if the family togetherness was a bit treacly at times. I'll still try more of these books, though - they are light reading and have lots of enjoyable period detail. 

The Peacock Emporium

The Peacock Emporium / JoJo Moyes 
London: Hodder & Stoughton, c2008.
436 p. 

Sometimes you're just in the mood for a relaxing, light read. I picked up this novel to read in my lunch breaks but it wasn't as light as I'd anticipated -- domestic violence, abandonment, divorce, death, estrangement -- it was all there.

I did finish it, and perhaps reading it bit by bit helped me to do so. I could take a break from the depressive pall the main character Suzanna Peacock cast over everything she did. 

So what's the story? I picked this up because it was ostensibly about Suzanna's Emporium, the curiosity shop she opens to stave off boredom when she and her husband Neil return to her English hometown, having to leave London to economize. Though if her idea of economizing is opening a shop and buying lovely stock that she doesn't really sell much of, sign me up for that budget!

Suzanna is fairly unhappy; she and her husband are distant from one another, she doesn't get along with her family too well (her mother abandoned them when she was an infant; Suzanna was always told her mother had died but....surprise, she didn't!), and she's not very good at shopkeeping, what with being standoffish and private and all. But when she hires local girl Jessie to be her clerk, Jessie's sunny extroverted personality and business acumen make the shop fairly successful. But disaster lurks ahead....

Meanwhile, in another story line, Alejandro, from South America, has come to England to intern as a midwife. He and Suzanna hit it off, rather well. He also has to decide what he wants from his life -- will he change direction, stay in England, or go home? 

Moyes also includes the back stories for Alejandro's family, for Suzanna's parents (all 3), for Jessie, and quite a lot about the other local shopkeepers. It felt at times like a bit too much of a jumble. I didn't feel that the characters rose above middling interest - they were not complex enough. Suzanna was so miserable for so long it was kind of tough to keep reading about her. I was quite honestly much more interested in the early chapter telling the story of her mother, her father, and the young girl who became her stepmother -- I would have liked to read that story instead. 

So while I enjoyed parts of this, and liked the descriptions of all the shops (a favourite fictional subject), I did find it a bit disjointed, and the requisite happy ending was not 100% believable. I've really enjoyed some of JoJo Moyes' books, but this one was just okay. It's not at the level of her more recent novels, though it is still better than others I've read in this genre! 

A middling read all in all. Recommended for fans of Moyes who want to read all her books.