Name: Fatin Allen's review of The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman
Item: The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted
Rating: 2
Author: Fatin Allen

Robert Hillman

• A compelling and heartbreaking tale of grief and memory set in a small Victorian town in the 1960s from award-winning author Robert Hillman • Tom Hope is a young farmer whose wife Trudy walks out on him, taking her young son and leaving Tom heartbroken. But then Tom meets Hannah Babel, a Hungarian migrant and small-town bookseller. Hannah is a survivor of World War II, a widow twice over and still in deep mourning for her young son, who died in Auschwitz. Can Tom and Hannah overcome their own experiences of losing a child, or is Tom taking on a battle with heartbreak he can barely even begin to imagine? • In an Australia undergoing both political and social change, Hannah brings the darkness and light of Europe to rural Victoria • Robert Hillman has previously written the life stories of a half-dozen Jewish survivors of the European War and has drawn on the knowledge he had gained in interviews and research to create the character of Hannah • The Bookshop of the Brokenhearted is about loss and longing—a love story that merges European and Australian sensibilities • For readers of Joan London and Richard Russo

The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted

Daisy van Splunter

Tom Hope doesn't chase rainbows. He does his best on the farm - he milks the cows, harvests the apples, looks after the sheep - but Tom's been lonely since his wife Trudy left, taking little Peter with her to go join the holy rollers. Enter Hannah Babel, quixotic smalltown bookseller: the second Jew - and the most vivid person - Tom has ever met. When she asks him to move in, and help her build Australia's most beautiful bookshop, Tom dares to believe they could make each other happy. But it is 1968: twenty-four years since Hannah and her own little boy arrived at Auschwitz. Tom Hope is taking on a battle with heartbreak he can barely even begin to imagine.

The Bookshop of the Broken-Hearted

Fatin Allen

Deceived by the title. Too dark and too sad for me to jump right back into fiction but if you like the intensity, then it’s for you. Took me a while to finish it. I even fell asleep while reading it twice.

I really like Tom, he’s a good guy and a decent human who can never avoid making mistakes. What’s good about him is that he thinks, reflects thoroughly and takes rational decisions for betterment. He’s selfless and empathetic.

I like the personal touch on the historical side of the story. Exposed me to the depth of impacts that war imposes on people. Deaths. Escape. Survival. Life after war.

A gorgeously written, tender, and wise novel about love and forgiveness in 1960s Australia, in which a lonely farmer finds his life turned upside down by the arrival of a vibrant librarian.

Daisy van Splunter &
The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman

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Daisy van Splunter &The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman

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Daisy van Splunter &
The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman