63 pages • 2 hours read
Evie WoodsThe Lost Bookshop
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “Opaline, Paris 1921”
Opaline meets writers like Hemingway, Joyce, and Fitzgerald. In addition, she begins a love affair with Armand. One day while she’s working in the bookshop, a journalist writing about Hemingway takes a photograph of Hemingway with Sylvia and Opaline in the background. She fears that it will alert Lyndon of her whereabouts but pushes it from her mind, concluding that he would never read such an article.
Another day, Opaline decides to surprise Armand with a visit but finds him at a cafe with another woman. He claims that he has had other affairs but realized he loved Opaline and was ending things with the other woman. Charmed despite herself, she returns with him to his apartment for the night. When she returns to her apartment, she sees her brother’s walking cane by the door.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Martha”
In the contemporary storyline, Madame Bowden holds a dinner party for old friends. Martha performs her duties mechanically, when she suddenly realizes that Madame Bowden herself isn’t at the dinner table. She asks the other ladies if Madame Bowden will be back for dessert, and they laugh at her and call her a country girl who obviously knows her place. Martha goes to her basement apartment, feeling lonely and depressed. Suddenly, she notices cracks in the wall behind the wardrobe, “like tiny vines creeping along the blue wall” (74). They look deep, and she doesn’t understand why she never noticed them before.
In the middle of the night, she awakens with “another line from the story in [her] head” (74). Throughout her life, she inexplicably receives lines from a story like messages that pop into her head fully formed. She then feels compelled to tattoo them on her back. She has never told anyone else about this.
In the morning, she goes to clean the mess from the dinner party the previous evening but finds that everything is cleaned and put away, as if nothing had ever happened. She assumes that Madame Bowden’s friends must have cleaned before they left.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Henry”
Henry asks Martha to meet him at a stationery shop. He shows her a Mont Blanc fountain pen (a Le Petit Prince edition), engraved with a quote from the book: “On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur” (81). Henry explains that it means “one sees clearly only with the heart” (81). He meant to impress her but realizes he can’t afford the expensive pen.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Opaline, Paris 1921”
Back in the 1920s storyline, Lyndon is at Opaline’s apartment. He and the friend he intends for her to marry drag her away, intending to keep her locked away until they can force her into marriage. The friend brags that Lyndon was called The Reaper during World War I and is infamous for executing many men in his command for supposed cowardice and desertion. It’s clearly a threat to keep Opaline in line. Opaline fears she won’t escape this time, but Armand, having witnessed the kidnapping, rescues her.
Armand takes Opaline to the bookshop, where Sylvia and James Joyce contrive to get her out of the country and into Ireland. Joyce has a colleague, Mr. Fitzpatrick, in Dublin who owns an antiques shop where she can find work.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Martha”
In the contemporary storyline, Martha follows Henry to the library at Trinity College. Henry takes her to see the Book of Kells, which is on display in the library. When Martha asks why he brought her here, Henry says, “I wanted to show you anything is possible. [...] After that day in the library, I could see you wanted to belong. And I just wanted to show you that you do” (97-98). Martha is touched by his gesture and the feeling of being seen.
Martha offhandedly comments that Henry’s father must be proud of him. Henry becomes upset and explains that as a child, he once found a signed and dated letter written by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was a huge discovery and worth a lot of money. His father took it and sold it for £500 and “drank the proceeds” (101).
Henry teases Martha for not reading. Hurt, Martha gets up to leave. He apologizes, and she retorts that hurt feelings are the least of her concerns and that physical injuries (like those she sustained earlier in her life) are much worse. She tells Henry about her husband. She had started courses at a technical college while dating Shane, and he grew increasingly jealous, controlling, and violent, but she married him anyway because she convinced herself that he’d change.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Henry”
Henry is horrified by Martha’s story and hugs her. His phone rings, and it’s Isabelle, his fiancée. He tells Martha, and she pulls away, saying that she should walk home alone. Feeling guilty, Henry returns to his B&B. He reflects on his relationship with Isabelle but avoids her calls. Instead, he returns to his research.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Opaline, Dublin 1921”
Back in the 1920s storyline, Opaline arrives in Dublin for a job at Mr. Fitzpatrick’s antiques shop but learns that he has died. However, his son, Matthew, offers to let her lease the shop and basement apartment on a trial basis to run herself. He shows her around the shop, and she notes the words painted on the steps of the stairs: “In a place called lost strange things are found” (121). Matthew explains that his father built the shop himself, having saved an old, abandoned library in Italy meant for demolition and taking it apart to rebuild in Dublin.
Opaline agrees to take the shop. That night, she hears a noise. She investigates and finds that a copy of Dracula by Bram Stoker has fallen on the floor in the shop. She puts it back on the shelf, but when she turns away it falls again. Feeling that it’s some kind of message, she takes the book to read.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Martha”
In the contemporary storyline, the cracks in the wall of Martha’s apartment are growing larger. Through the crumbling plaster she now sees real branches growing through the wall. She mentions it to Madame Bowden, who tells her not to worry about the quirks of old buildings. That night, Martha discovers that one of the roots growing in the basement has flattened into a shelf. On that shelf is a single book: A Place Called Lost by an anonymous author. She assumes that Madame Bowden must have left it for her, not knowing that the very notion of reading causes her extreme stress. Thinking it would be rude to refuse the gift, she decides to try reading it anyway.
Chapters 10-17 Analysis
In these chapters, the conflicts increase as the characters face setbacks. Opaline’s hardships come from two sides. Armand proves unfaithful, though Opaline succumbs to his charms despite herself, setting a pattern of behavior that they repeat throughout the novel. Chapter 10 foreshadows the return of her conflict with Lyndon, when Opaline is photographed and fears that Lyndon will see it. She reasons, “Lyndon was hardly a reader of Cosmopolitan. Nothing to worry about, I assured myself, and I almost believed it too” (63). The “almost” in this sentence forewarns that she’s wrong, which proves true in Chapter 13 when Lyndon arrives and kidnaps her.
In Martha and Henry’s timeline, the conflict arises in their growing relationship. Martha acknowledges to herself that she likes Henry; however, she’s afraid because of her past experiences with her abusive husband, and she knows Henry’s heart lies elsewhere. Henry, likewise, is clearly attracted to Martha and works hard to impress her, but just as they start to grow closer, he’s forced to admit that he’s engaged. Although Shane remains a major antagonist in Martha’s story, the tension often centers on Martha’s and Henry’s internal conflicts.
Elements of magical realism increase in these chapters, centered around Martha. Inexplicably, cracks form in the walls of her basement apartment. After some initial concern, Martha accepts the cracks as simply something that happens. This matter-of-fact attitude is a common component of magical realism—characters often don’t remark on, or expect explanations for, strange and magical occurrences. When the cracks reveal tree roots growing through the wall and ceiling, Martha barely reacts. She accepts when the roots form into shelves and A Place Called Lost magically appears. Although she assumes that Madame Bowden must have left her the book, the reader knows that this is unlikely. A similarly inexplicable event occurs in Opaline’s timeline when a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula repeatedly falls off the shelf and Opaline simply assumes she’s meant to read it.
Martha reveals another trait that marks her as a magical realist character. In addition to her strange ability to read people’s pasts and emotions, she also inexplicably receives lines from an unknown story like messages out of nowhere, which she then feels compelled to tattoo on her back. In keeping with the tradition of magical realism, she doesn’t behave as if this is especially weird or tell others about it. She simply accepts it as something that doesn’t require explanation, without any indication that she thinks it’s unusual.
The Search for Purpose and Belonging reappears as a theme in Chapter 14, when Henry takes Martha to see the Book of Kells. He explains that he “could see [she] wanted to belong” (98) and wanted to show her that she did. These chapters introduce another major theme, The Human Need for Love, and begin to explore the ways that this theme manifests itself throughout people’s lives. Opaline wants love so much that she initially ignores Armand’s true nature. This is mirrored in Martha, who stayed with Shane as he grew more violent not only out of fear but also out of a belief that he’d once again become the man she fell in love with. As remains true throughout the narrative, books appear everywhere, highlighting their power to inspire, motivate, and comfort. Finding A Place Called Lost inspires Martha to try reading again, despite a fraught history with reading. As Martha’s story progresses, the found book becomes vital to her development. In addition, the found book eventually becomes a connection between the two timelines, suggesting a sense of love and belonging across generations.
