Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a rare thing – a book with one foot in the past and one in the future. It manages to toe the line between a call-to-arms for an open and free digital archive of books, and a celebration of more traditional bookshops and authentic crinkly tomes.
It’s the tale of a young designer called Clay who accepts a job at a small bookshop and slowly ends up falling headfirst into a strange conspiracy replete with black-robed acolytes, a mysterious code to be cracked and a powerful supercomputer owned by Google. Now I’m sure you weren’t expecting that last part! Google itself features rather heavily in the plot; portrayed not as some evil, privacy-invading conglomerate but as a intelligent but slightly hippy techno-commune, albeit one with a car-park sized computer.
The supporting cast is a wonderful collection of misfits that wouldn’t feel out of place in a small indie film. There’s the obsessive Mat, a crafter of intricate props for ILM; Mr Penumbra himself, a twinkly and curious senior; and a whole array of oddballs that frequent the shop, looking for their next fix.
The plot keeps moving at a quick pace, with each of the smaller roadblocks being solved by one of Clay’s companions as they creep ever closer to the true heart of the mystery. The dialogue is frequently witty and like the books in the story itself, filled with small literary and numerical Easter eggs. It feels like a book that everyone can enjoy – but a certain cross-section of the population will adore this book. I fit comfortably in the centre of this hypothetical Venn-Diagram, being interested in all of the following:
books
typography
tiny miniature cities
Wes Anderson
crowd sourcing
witty thrillers
manic-pixie-dream-girls
and bookshops.
Although the book is about all of the above, what it most strongly leaves you with is a feeling of friendship and what that means to the characters, both in the here and now, and also in the very spirit of the bookstore and the people who started and continued it. It’s a fun and unique read from an author I’ll be keeping a tab on.
