Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan, is this month’s selection for my book club. It follows the story of Clay Jannon, a recent art school graduate, who happens upon a job as the third-shift clerk for a peculiar bookstore run by a peculiar old man. He is as of yet unaware of the adventure awaiting him in the secret books and curious customers walking into his life. While wearing the appearance of a quirky modern novel focused on the confrontation of literature and technology, it read more like a classroom exercise in novel composition, and seemed less interested in the artistry involved in writing. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t fun moments, but it was extremely predictable at every turn, and I wish it hadn’t been.
Seeming more interested in pushing toward conclusion than exploring his creation, Sloan chooses a plot and then sketches a world around its edges, giving his creation no room to thrive. The reader is sees a set of predictable, well-worn characters with no substance, stirring an emotion closer to loathing than anything else as the story unfolds. We have the awkward main character who is a nerd because he used to read a fantasy novel, The Dragonsong Chronicles, and play Dungeons & Dragons, wait I mean Rockets and Warlocks (a terrible fake title; you shouldn’t mix fantasy and science) as a child. There’s the love interest, herself a nerd and computer whiz who works at Google, and has a surprising amount of clout with her employer for her young age. There’s the sidekick best friend from childhood (specific friendship centered upon love of aforementioned fantasy novel and RPG) who is just as nerdy, but also a Silicon Valley tycoon thanks to his computer software that renders breasts in 3D for video games. Then we have Mr. Penumbra, the eccentric old man that the young folk must save. All the other characters are ancillary, and most could probably be discarded without damaging the plot. Of the main four, none really even stood out and the entire book felt so generic. I think Sloan is unable to harness the voice of the generation he depicts, and it seems to me the work of an author pandering to a disengaged audience, much like a father attempts to impress his children. He spends more time mentioning iPhone games, e-readers, Google and than any quality character development, and the few characters who develop more than a sentence-long background are still just a hodgepodge of quirks, nothing more.
By mixing flimsy character elements with rapid narrative speed, we’re left with a lack of suspense and an overflow of action. Somehow days or weeks elapse over the course of a few pages, so the reader has no concept of time in this world. There are myriad plot points hit in unrelenting succession, but don’t think that signals adventure. Although not likely the intent, this book undercuts tension at every turn. Any exciting incident is immediately resolved so the narrative can move forward; there’s no time to understand the effect these situations have on the characters. I was baffled why any character was emotionally invested in any other because no reasons were given for such investment and the amount of emotional depth in all the relationships, even the romantic one, equates to that of cordial acquaintances at a party. Even if the author consciously forsook character for plot, he apparently figured focusing on plot meant writing a lot of it. More often than not, the tension is destroyed by the undermining of consequence. The narrator finds himself in bad situations, but always gets by, not by any personal means, but simply through the indifference of the other characters. No one seems to worry when centuries-old secrets are revealed, instead using those moments to supply back story. No stakes are clearly established so the story always feels vague, as even the characters themselves don’t seem to understand their motivations.
This novel didn’t explore greater conflict of literature versus technology any further than the difficulty of scanning books and harvesting their information. A detailed rumination on the subject would be welcomed, as this fight gets at the core of new versus old, but instead we have a book that would rather let us know friendship is important, because that’s news… I guess I just left disappointed with the book it could have been. The writing style, while not terrible, is nothing to write home about, and I think he should have styled his novel like he described in the epilogue. “I will write down everything that happened. I’ll copy some of it from the logbook, find more in old emails and text messages, and reconstitute the rest from memory.” In this format, Sloan’s story could have been told with a collection of all the different writing styles available in books and online, letting the reader piece the novel together and solve the puzzle himself. Sadly, we’re not left with anything as exciting, and close the final pages unsatisfied.
To those who liked the book, my apologies. To my book club cohorts, I hope this doesn’t sour your opinion of me or my reviews, and I’ll try to like things more in the future. I think I just let my inner cynic invade this entire review. While not an amazing work of literature, it’s a short, easy quest that fits in a weekend, and can be quite fun. Don’t worry though, you’ll take home a number of life lessons at the end; they’re all summarized in the epilogue.
Critical Dan 