Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore – Robin Sloan

Clay Jannon, late web-master of the recently defunct NewBagel Company, is pounding the streets of San Francisco in search of new employment when he spots a sign in the window of a bookshop: “Help Wanted, Late Shift, Specific Requirements, Good Benefits”.

Inside it is dark, cavernous with shelving stacks disappearing into the gloom above and beyond. Behind the desk is an old man, thin, grey but with sparkling blue eyes, Mr Penumbra himself. The interview, conducted immediately, is short and unconventional and sees him installed on the night shift (10 till 2).

Purchasers are few and far between, and stocks for sale are limited to a few bookcases front of house; but there are a select band of ‘members’ who borrow volumes from the ‘waybacklist’ housed on those vertiginous shelves. Other than being punctual for his solo shift there are two other golden requirements: he must not read any of the books, and he must record all transactions in detail – including the customers’ physical appearance and state of mind.

All very strange, but it pays the rent on a flat-share, and with plenty of time on his hands overnight, he passes it working on a couple of techie projects: a computerised 3D model of the bookstore to enable ‘data visualisation’ and a small scale hyper-targeted advertising application to snare any potential customer passing by. The latter, completed first, lures in a young woman via her smartphone. She is unimpressed with the bookstore but clocks the 3D model on his laptop and takes a professional interest.

The relationship develops, both personally (she is cute) and professionally (she is a Google programmer) and when they apply cutting edge techniques and geeky networks to the mystery of the waybacklist and its users, things get interesting. A secret society is unearthed and powerful reactionary forces are unleashed.

But it is not too heavy or scary, more light and frothy. Clay’s friends, joined in the enterprise, are bright, witty young things showing a frighteningly comprehensive (real or fictional) knowledge of IT and a belief that all problems are solvable. The older generation pitch in with some OK - ‘old knowledge’ – wisdom, but this is a book that looks forward not back.

It is written for the young but can still be enjoyed by an oldie like me.

The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt

With the blurb including the phrase “a Dickensian dazzler” the expectation was for a nineteenth century setting in smoky London town, so it was a surprise to be pitched instead into twenty-first century New York.

The narrator is Theo Decker, thirteen as the story opens, and on his way with his mother (currently his only parent) to a school disciplinary meeting. They are early, it starts to rain, and they pop into the art gallery to shelter, taking the opportunity to have another peek at their favourite work – the Goldfinch, barely more than a miniature, painted by a Dutch master, and priceless. On the back of such a coincidental chain of circumstance, disaster strikes, leaving Theo bereft of his dear mother but in secret possession of the painting.

To whom will his care be entrusted? Initially it is the family of his geeky friend Andy Barbour, in their swish Park Avenue apartment, where he gets a taste of the high life and refined society. But it is temporary and when his absentee father turns up to claim him he is whisked off to Las Vegas where the paternal business of gambling is based. There, left to his own devices, he is befriended by the other loner on the school bus, Boris Pavlikovski, similarly neglected by his Russian/Ukrainian mining engineer father. The two boys largely fend for themselves; largely with alcohol and drugs.

His third “loco parentis” is Hobie, surviving partner of Hobart and Blackwell, dealers in and restorers of antique furniture, befriended due to Blackwell having perished in the same disaster that claimed Mrs Decker. Hobie’s workshop provides a retreat when the Barbours get too overwhelming and an escape when his Las Vegas life finally runs off the rails.

While Theo’s care is fragmented and chaotic, his care of the painting is meticulous and of course unknown; his ownership (and the circumstances of it) having an importance to him that far outweighs its monetary value.

Having survived a traumatic childhood and adolescence, stability beckons – as a respected partner in Hobie’s business and engaged to a Barbour girl – but someone is on his case, digging up his past and making waves.

Dealing with it makes the upheavals of his youth seem child’s play; he is soon embroiled with the big boys (including, for good or bad, his old friend Boris) who deal not in dodgy furniture but drugs, guns and, tellingly, stolen art.

So not that Dickensian, except Theo could easily be a modern day David Copperfield or Pip of Great Expectations, also orphans left to grow up in an unfamiliar world buffeted by adults who are kind, cruel and indifferent (some of them all three). These characters that surrounded Theo (more than mentioned above), and in some way define him, are well drawn and pleasingly complex.

It is as long as a Dickens novel at 850 pages, but the prose is easy on the eye, making each of them a pleasure to read.