The Door-to-Door Bookstore, whose author is Carsten Henn, translated from the German by Melody Shaw, is an undoubtedly emotional, inspiring novel about friendships between generations developed through books.
Carl Kollhoff, a 72-year-old bookseller in southern Germany, is beloved among his customers for finding just the right books for them. But his role is threatened when a new boss is determined to push out the star employee.
One of the limited highlights of Carl’s life is to deliver books every evening to a handful of shut-in customers. The selections are made by their stated preferences—for happy endings, tragedy, philosophical works and so on. Trouble happens when a pretty wise (and a little annoying) motherless 9-year-old girl tags along with him on his rounds. She decides Carl is not actually giving his customers what they really need, and comes up with a plan to correct this.
Like Carl’s backpack, Henn manages to fill his novel with books without weighing it down. Chapter titles suggest that classics are involved: The Stranger, The Red and the Black, Great Expectations. Carl, who is terrible with names, assigns a literary character to each customer—Mr. Darcy, Mrs. Longstocking, The Reader—to help him keep them straight.
We gradually come to know these townsfolk: the abused wife, and the ambitious writer with the soothing voice who is paid to read classics to cigar factory workers.
The Door-to-Door Bookstore is also filled with amusing observations. Carl divides readers into hares (野兔), who race through books; fish, who allow books to carry them along on their current; curious lapwings (鸟头麦鸡), who jump ahead to see the ending first; and tortoises, who fall asleep each night after a single page and take months to get through a book, having to turn back repeatedly to check what they’ve forgotten.
Readers will have fun finding themselves in these pages.
【小题1】Where is the text most probably taken from?| A．A review of a book. | B．An essay on literature classics. |
| C．An introduction to a bookstore. | D．A biography of Carl Kollhoff. |
| A．The takeover of a family business by a young girl. |
| B．The friendship between Carl and a 9-year-old girl. |
| C．Carl’s struggle to find the right books for his customers. |
| D．The competition among different bookstores in Germany. |
| A．To compare the book with them. | B．To stress the importance of them. |
| C．To help readers understand the book. | D．To show their popularity. |
| A．Readers will relate to the characters and situations in the novel. |
| B．Readers will find satisfaction in correctly guessing the endings of the books. |
| C．Readers will enjoy the different ways people read books. |
| D．Readers will be amused by the diverse personalities of the customers. |
