They’ve been in before. They always stand shoulder to shoulder so they don’t miss anything they might say to each other.
‘John Steinbeck. This one. I’ve got it though. Have I, or not…’
The others pause and look at him; then they turn back to the soft shelves, the soft books and the delicate powerful titles.
Strait is the Gate, Paludes, Steppenwolf, The Bloody Chamber, Slouching Towards Bethlehem…
They, the readers, lean in and murmur to each other.
I am interested in this group because they always make outrageous and unexplained choices.
(But why this book? Why? Why? What do you know? I am frantic to see through their eyes.)
‘There’s no Brontes here.’
‘There’s a couple of Lawrences. There’s that Norwegian thing. Huge number of pages. There’s these Penguins. They’re nice.’
‘My God, look at this.’
(Nobody looks, except me, rudely leaning forward to see. Whatever it is, I want it back.)
‘I need Oryx and Crake.’
(But this isn’t at the shop. I know because it’s at my house.)They shuffle along, pulling out oblongs of paperback, pushing their lips out, sharing gently everything they know.
‘I want The Moon Opera.’
(Damn it, so do I, now.)
‘What’s it about?’
‘Oh God. Don’t you know, the boiling water?’
‘Lend it me?’
‘Don’t have it. And it’s not here.’
(I am at my laptop, ordering myself a copy.)
They move along again; they are at the Viragos. I can’t believe how much they’ve read, and I am furious.
They talk and talk, together, but not quite in time. Spirals of it.
‘Any Stephen Crane? Any Helen Garner? Any Beatrix?’ They melt continents and sandwich centuries together.
‘Oh God. It’s Boyd Oxlade.’
‘What’d he write?’
‘You know. Death in Brunswick. I’m getting this, it’s hilarious as.’
‘Give us a look.’
‘You read Don Quixote?’
‘Not yet. Going to though.’
(So am I)
They stack the harvest and come slowly to the counter. I want all the books back. They know. They look at me, hard and assertive. ‘Credit card ok?’
It is.
Damn.
(Italicized line from Birdsong For Two Voices by Alice Oswald)
KerryHoodWrites 
This group really has an effect on you! I love this line: “They talk and talk, together, but not quite in time. Spirals of it.”
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Thank you Priscilla – actually, I meant to have italicized those lines because they are not mine. They’re from a poem by Alice Oswald called ‘Birdsong for Two Voices”. It’s fabulous, and these young people reminded me of it.
This is the first verse:
“A spiral ascending the morning,
climbing by means of a song into the sun,
to be sung reciprocally by two birds at intervals
in the same tree but not quite in time.”
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Thanks for explaining about the poem. I don’t know the poem, but now I see the bookstore voices and the birdsong connection.
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This is the best children’s novel title I’ve ever seen. Bravo!
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Thank you 🙂 🙂
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