The Diary of a Bookseller

WEDNESDAY, 26 NOVEMBER

Online orders: 2

Books found: 1

Decline and Fall arrived in this morning’s post, so I telephoned Mr Deacon to let him know.

Sandy the tattooed pagan came in with his friend. He dropped off six sticks and found a book on Celtic mythology.

Customer came in at 4 p.m. with a box of modern paperback fiction which included a copy of José Saramago’s brilliant book Blindness and a copy of Pereira Maintains, by Antonio Tabucchi, both of which had been given to me by an Italian friend who was horrified by my ignorance of contemporary European fiction. Pereira Maintains was a book I greatly enjoyed, but Blindness was astonishing. There are few other books in which I have felt so completely immersed and – ironically – visualised so clearly. The filth and pathetic chaos of a world in which everyone has gone blind, the fragility of the social contract and the rapid disintegration of society following the loss of a single sense are so vividly painted by Saramago that it draws the reader in almost as a participant in the story rather than an observer and – like Hogg’s Justified Sinner – spits you out at the end asking more questions of the world around you.

Till total £90.55

9 customers