Tom is a farmer in rural Australia in the 1960’s. He doesn’t have the best of luck when it comes to the women in his life. This book is definitely about love and loss, of nations and individuals. But I struggled to read it at times because I just couldn’t connect with one of the main characters. There were some parts of pure beauty in the storytelling, and then there were other points where it dragged and I would put it down and not pick it up again for days. At the end I felt like the whole book had been left mid-sentence, like it hadn’t been completed. Overall not really my cup of tea. My thanks to NetGalley and Faber & Faber for allowing me to read this book in return for an honest review.

4.5★
“Animals forgave his unease. The mare he’d bought for Trudy to enjoy obeyed him, never her.”

Tom Hope has trouble with hope. A nice-looking farmer with his own place, he knows he needs a wife, because that’s what people do. Trudy. Trudy is a high-strung girl who can’t settle in spite of everything Tom does to try to please her. The book blurb tells of her disappearance and her return, pregnant with another man’s child, as well as much of the following, so I don't think there are any spoilers.

When Peter is born, they are a family. Tom lives on what was his Uncle Frank’s farm, running a few dairy cows, a flock of sheep, and managing an orchard, mostly single-handed. He’s an old-fashioned sort of bloke who’s liked well enough by those who know him, but Trudy and Peter are the first for whom he is special. That’s until she takes off again – she can’t cope – and leaves Peter on the farm.

Tom adores Peter and vice-versa. Peter follows him and the dog everywhere, ‘helping’ as very small children do, while Tom fixes the tractor, takes engines apart, repairs fences, and goes fishing.

“He knew Trudy would come and take the boy away one day. The thought always came to him just at the height of his happiness. He chased it away by shaking his head and waving a hand in front of his face.”

Faced with that kind of threat, I think we’re all inclined to do the same – dismiss it. But when that day comes, and Trudy takes Peter to the Jesus people, he is beside himself with anguish. The author reveals his despair, his hopelessness, and his eventual decision to get on with life. He’s thirty-three.

While he’s in town at the shops, buying meat because he hates killing (but can’t bring himself to admit it to the butcher), he notices a new shop – looks like a bookshop from the cartons - and asks Juicy, the butcher about it.

First, though, here’s Juicy.

“The real Casanova of Hometown was Juicy, who gave himself to adultery so unapologetically that past lovers would take a moment at the counter to ask about the progress of more current affairs. And it was Juicy who got about the hills—not on a camel but in his bronze and black Monaro—advertising his perpetual adolescence.”

[A Monaro is an Aussie icon, a GM Holden muscle car, originally produced in the 1960s and 7os. I indulge myself by including this because we loved ours. :) ]

[My Goodreads review includes a photograph of a black with bronze stripes 1969 HT Monaro.]

When Tom asks about the bookshop, Juicy and another customer discuss it.

“‘Hannah’s shop, Tom. Lady from the continent, as they say.’

‘Jewish,’ said Dulcie, as if the single word provided a catalogue of important information.

‘That’s right,’ said Juicy.‘A Jewish lady. From the continent. What, you’ve got some objections, Dulce?’

‘Me? No. Have I? I don’t know.’

Hometown is a small place. Dulcie’s not really sure what she believes about foreigners. Tom knows about the war, of course, but his people fought in the Pacific, as did many Aussies, so he doesn’t know much about the European campaigns and the Jews.

We are certainly going to know. The author takes us back to Hannah's early life and to Auschwitz, where her heart was broken. In Hometown, she is as bright and bubbly as a girl, but then she can slip into violent dark moods. This is not a mental disorder but a consequence of the war, losing her family and her own small son.

The story is full of white – fabrics, hair, light – and it appears throughout the book. Stones and pebbles also appear often. The white is sometimes clean and lovely, but the white gloves of the preacher of the Jesus people are terrifying.

The stones range from small lucky pebbles to the massive stones that are the basis of the huge Lutheran barn that features later in the book. Hannah made a promise a long time ago, and Tom contemplates her determination to stick to her word.

“What Tom didn’t say, didn’t think of saying, but believed, was that all vows could go to the devil. That’s what could be teased out, picked out from the pain in his heart. All vows could go to the devil, these stones set up as boundaries that endured the weather and the change of seasons and would not alter when all around them was altering each day; everything in the thriving world changing, but the stones unaltered.”

It is written in such a way that I felt the agony of the choices people had to make. Life is what life is, and hope, Tom Hope, endures. How he does it is beyond me.

Partly it’s because he is a man who works with his hands, a perfectionist who saves special timbers and gets absorbed in his work. At one point, this:

“By the time Hannah arrived, Tom’s face was a terrain of wood dust traversed by shallow valleys carved by sweat.”

Later:

“Tom, heart-sore as he so often was but finding solace in the painstaking, looked up from his workbench.”
. . .
Happiness, for Tom, was a fugitive; when it appeared, it had to be roused to confidence, encouraged. Anything too gaudy and it might slip back into the shadows, perhaps forever.”

I must just add Hannah’s idiosyncratic way of shelving books. She shelved by title, to mix things up and make authors get along with each other.

“At the same time, she would ride roughshod over any rule in order to save a book from the jeopardy of an unsympathetic shelf companion.’The Making of the English Working Class’ was not expected to sit beside ‘The Making of Americans’, a book Hannah disliked. As a buffer between the two, she had placed a skinny soft-cover booklet, ‘Making Your Own Jam.’”

She is a strong-willed woman, but erratic. Trudy is weak-willed and erratic. Tom tries to run his property, his dairy, his orchards, his sheep and his household while mourning his loss just as Hannah mourns hers.

Beautifully written. My only quibble is that I know what it takes to run a property, and I find it hard to believe anyone could manage so much so well in any circumstances, let alone these. But I suspend disbelief for a lot of good books, so I’m prepared to do it for this one.

I’ve never read anything by this author before, but. I’m so pleased NetGalley and the publisher, Faber and Faber, gave me a copy for review. The quotes may have changed.

I had expected a light, frothy read, but this is more than that. Set in Australia in the Sixties, this is full of heartache and emotion. Well written and full of well rounded characters, I should have loved it, but it was too downbeat in places for me to truly enjoy. This probably says more about me than about the book..

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publishers for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Tom is a farmer in Australia. He doesn't necessarily have good luck with women. He isn't very confident in himself and maybe the women sense this about him. He does have a lot of love to give.
The story started out slow but once Hannah came into the picture it picked up for me.

I chose not to review this book on my blog because being transparent, I didn't give it a chance to fully develop my interest. I've been reading it for three days and I'm not quite halfway through. It's made its way to my "did not finish" shelf as I believe life is too short to spend time reading books that just aren't working for you. I may come back to it at another time.

The premise of the story still gives me hope that it could be a remarkable tale, but I found I couldn't connect with the writing style at this point in time. My thanks to the publisher for providing a chance to review a complimentary copy of this title via NetGalley.

All Tom Hope wanted was to tend to his sheep farm in Australia and please his wife. Unfortunately his wife could not be pleased. She leaves, and Tom being the patient, caring and understanding man, waits for her return. Which she does. Only to leave him again for good which breaks his heart.

Then a mysterious woman named Hannah comes to town via Hungary. She is the total opposite of Tom's ex-wife. She is spontaneous, affectionate, smart and motivated. She decides she wants to open a bookstore in the rural town and asks Tom to build some shelving.

But Hannah has had her own heart broken. A survivor of the Holocaust, she has witnessed loss and hate. These two polar opposites begin to fall in love. Tom who is not book savvy at all begins to read books Hannah suggests to him. And thus begins a relationship of survival. And just like it seems highly unlikely a bookshop could ever succeed in this small town, is it possible they ever will?

Can these two wounded souls ever find the happiness they both deserve or will their pasts continue to haunt them? Are they even capable of getting the happy ending they both deserve?

Please visit the Bookstore of the Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman. You will not be disappointed!

Thank you #NetGalley #G.P.Putnam'sSon's #TheBookshopoftheBrokenHearted #RobertHillman for the advanced copy.

Beautifully writtwn, heartbreaking and intriguing. My only problem was it sometimes dragged because of the flashbacks. But not enough to detract from the overall feeling of the novel. Overall great.

It was a really strange book. Not really my cup of tea and very much limited on the bookshop. I'm sure other people will enjoy it but it wasn't for me

I enjoyed The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted, though perhaps "enjoyed" is the wrong word given how much pain is on display in this emotional novel.

It took me much longer than usual to get into this fiction - maybe even 25% before I could say I was into the story. But from that point on, I couldn't read anything else. I just had to know what happened to these, well, broken-hearted people.

The book mostly takes place in late 1960s Australia, with several flashbacks to one of the characters' time at Auschwitz. This isn't the first time a book has displayed how pain and loss influences people years later, but as a reader I so loved how the bookshop came into play. A bookshop endeavor that carries great personal meaning to a character? That hits me where I live.

At times, The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted did feel a bit disjointed, and some characters were introduced who I'm not sure added much to the story. But overall, this was a transportive read and, by the halfway point, a page-turner.

The Bookstore of the Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman is not the light romance, set in a bookstore, that I expected. Also, it is not about a bookstore. It is the very emotional and moving story of an Australian farmer who falls in love with a Holocaust survivor. Indeed, both are broken-hearted. The characters are complex and memorable. The story moves back in time to tell Hannah’s story while Tom’s story is set in the late 1960’s.

This was a hard read; Hillman is a masterful writer who conveys his characters’ emotional pain without restraint. Nonetheless, I could not put this book down until I knew what happened and how the story resolved. This story is well worth your time. Thank you to NetGalley and Faber and Faber for the opportunity to read an electronic ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

This was a complex, but lovely, book. It isn’t a light, easy read by any means. The characters Hannah and Tom are dealing with immense losses. Hannah has lost her entire family, including her husband and only child, to Auschwitz, and Tom has lost his wife not once but twice, the second time with her son Peter who Tom had raised since his birth as his wife wanted nothing to do with the boy.

Hannah hires Tom to build some bookshelves for her new bookstore, and their relationship emerges quietly from the pages. The townspeople are not so accepting of their relationship since Hannah is quite a bit older than Tom but they love Tom so they come together to support the couple.

The return of Peter shatters their precarious bond and Hannah’s fragile mental health. Tom is torn between loving his wife or the boy he raised as his own son. Interwoven with all of this are the dramas and tragedies that are life on an Australian farm – storms, floods, predators, human tragedies. But in the end this is a story of hope, love, and healing.

I had such a hard time putting this book down to do inconvenient things like drive, sleep, or work. Hannah’s story, told in flashback chapters, was heartbreaking and yet made us admire her strength. All that she overcame would have broken many people, and it did in both real life and the book. Tom was so endearing, trying to be the best husband he could be, writing lists of ideas to improve himself. His relationship with Peter was so touching. Their bond was unbreakable.

I definitely recommend this book.

This was a slow-moving book for me. I liked Tom and felt his devastation at losing Peter. It seemed to take a long time for the story to get around to the bookshop - - and ultimately the book wasn't about the bookshop at all. The writing is good and the characters are vivid but the story bounces around quite a bit. So much sadness.

3.5 Stars. An interesting novel about a farmer in Australia and the woman he meets who is a Holocaust survivor, as well as a young boy. I found Tom so lovable and you just couldn’t help but root for him. Hannah’s story was heartbreaking. The two of them together were amazing. I found the story a bit difficult to follow though as it changed points of view and the way Hannah spoke sometimes made the story a bit difficult to read. Overall this was an enjoyable read. Thank you to Faber & Faber and Netgalley for the ARC.

The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted is a literary novel from award winning Australian author, Robert Hillman.

In the Spring of 1968, as Tom Hope toils away on his farm, lonely after his wife has deserted him and taken her son with her, Hannah Babel arrives in rural Victoria intending to open a bookshop, and offer piano and flute lessons.

The farming community of Hometown seems an unlikely place for a woman like Hannah, a Jew who barely survived the horrors of Auschwitz and it’s aftermath, to settle, and in which to establish a bookshop with a goal to sell twenty five thousand books, in honour of her father, who died in an internment camp.

“She took an oblong of stiff paper, craft paper, the colour of parchment, sat at the counter and wrote a single line of neat Hebrew script with black ink and a steel-nibbed pen....And so Hannah's first choice of a name for her business remained known only to her: Bookshop of the broken hearted."

Hannah, and Tom, who responds to Hannah’s request for help hang a sign, become an unlikely couple. Hannah’s effusive persona contrasts with Tom’s taciturn nature, and the age difference (Hannah is more than a decade older) worries some of the townsfolk, especially those who know how much Tom misses his wife’s son, Peter. Tom however finds Hannah beguiling, if a bit mad, and is quietly thrilled that such an interesting woman seems to be so interested in him.

“He felt like a great block of stone talking to her, but she was interested in him, that’s what it felt like. He had never before in his life been made to feel interesting.”

This is much more than a love story though, one of the major themes Hillman explores is that of suffering. Hannah’s suffering during the Holocaust, including the loss of her husband and son; Tom’s suffering after the loss of Peter; and Peter’s suffering at the hands of his mother and the leaders of the ‘Jesus Camp’.

“Tom didn’t think of himself as observant, astute. He didn’t notice things. He more failed to notice. But when he pictured Mrs Babel’s—sorry, Hannah’s—face, as he did now, her eyes, her green eyes, he grasped that she was suffering. That huge smile, all of her teeth on show, one at the side a bit discoloured; but she was suffering. He had suffered. In the same way? He didn’t know.”

The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted is a languid, poignant story about loss, heartbreak, survival, hope and redemption.

Book is set in the late 1960s in rural Australia, where Tom Hope Hannah meet. Tom is left heartbroken after his unfaithful wife escapes with the boy who Tom loved like his own sun he’s come to feel for as his own son. And Hannah who is a survivor of Holocaust survivor and much older than Tom. Yet the attraction is very strong.

This book is very different from what I normally read and that was the main reason I liked it. A great read and strong story full of love, grief and kindness with several characters showing remarkable resilience

Complimentary copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Sorry, this book was not for me - I read for enjoyment and to escape everyday life and I just can't read another book abour a Holocaust survivor right now. I know the protagonist is a farmer, but I can't bear animal suffering either. Then to top it off, there is an innocent child and a good, decent man who suffer as well.
And the story is nor even about a bookshop.

A story about broken hearts but also about hope and I am sure the author named his main character Tom Hope for that reason.

I really became attached to Tom during the course of this book. He starts out seeming to be a quiet, weak sort of man but the soft, unassuming side of him turns out to hide huge strength of character. He also seems to be capable of almost anything, turning his farm into a success, taking on the evil Pastor at the "Jesus Camp", and earning the devotion of a small boy who is not even his own son.

The other characters did not appeal so much. Trudy was just awful until she redeemed herself amazingly towards the end. Hannah was impossible to understand. Everyone judges her as 'mad' and maybe she is considering the awful events she survived. However she also comes across as not an especially nice person and I wanted better for Tom.

Nevertheless the story grabbed me and I enjoyed the whole book. The child abuse scenes are difficult to read but the eventual conclusion was satisfying. This is not a light read but it is a worthwhile one.

Tom Hope is an Australian sheep rancher who is head-over-heels in love with wife Trudy and then broken-hearted when she leaves. “He thought, I’m meant to be alone. He had more reason than Trudy running away to make him believe this. He’s always been awkward with people.” She returns after many months, pregnant by another man. Trudy isn’t interested much in her son and ultimately she goes away again, leaving Peter solely in Tom’s care. Tom is once again crushed when she returns a couple of years later to take Peter away.

Most of the book is a beautiful love story that develops between Tom and Hannah, a broken-hearted-widowed Holocaust survivor who moves to Hometown, Australia and opens up a bookstore. She anguishes over the loss of her son in the camps and has vowed that she will never again be responsible for a child or love one, which means she refuses to accept Peter. There’s an interesting parallel to Hannah’s Holocaust story that develops with the authoritarian Jesus Camp where Trudy and Peter become literal prisoners.

It’s an extremely readable book but I found it knuckle-biting at times because nothing comes easy for either Tom or Hannah. The chapters alternate between contemporary events in Hometown, Hannah’s Holocaust experiences, and then her return to Budapest after the war. Engaging!!

This is not so much about a bookshop but about two broken-hearted people who find each other. It's a wonderful tale about the power of love, hope and forgiveness in a small Australian town.

Tom Hope is a quiet, gentle, modest man. An excellent farmer who cares about his animals and his trees but not the extrovert, outgoing companion that his wife Trudy would wish for. A city girl, she soon runs off but returns later pregnant with another man's baby. Tom is a natural father and comes to love the child, Peter, but Trudy eventually takes off again to live in a 'Jesus Camp', eventually returning to take Peter to live with the cult when he is five. By this time Tom and Peter had forged an unbreakable bond and the separation is devastating for both of them.

When Tom is asked by a newcomer to town, the exotic, extroverted Hannah Babel to build bookshelves for her new bookshop, he isn't expecting to ever fall in love again. Particularly not with an older woman, a Hungarian Jew who lost her husband and son in Auschwitz. Hannah is educated and very well-read. Through her bookshop she dreams of selling twenty five thousand books, the number publicly burnt by German students in Berlin on May 10, 1933. Tom left school early and has little knowledge of literature, but in Hannah he discovers a warmth and passion he has never known. She has, however, told him that after the pain of losing her son, she could never let herself love a child again.

This is a slowly developing tale in which the peace and beauty of the rural Australian setting is set against the horrors of the Holocaust and the cruelty of Peter's life with the harsh religious cult that his mother has joined. The characters are beautifully drawn and heartbreaking in their grief - little Peter in his yearning to be back on the farm where he is safe and loved by Tom, Hannah with her grief for her son that is almost too huge to face and Tom with his aching to make Hannah and Peter feel cherished and happy again. A wonderful read.

This was such a wonderful and moving read!

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.

Robert Hillman beautifully told this story through three different narrative strands. He delightfully captured the era, from the popular songs to politics and current events, books, authors and social attitudes to mention just a few. All of these firmly cemented this tale in the 1960s.

Populated with a stupendous cast of characters, both primary and peripheral and from the reliable, determined and well-organised to the socially awkward, shallow and brusque, each was believable and easy to imagine in a small Victorian country town.

The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted is packed with love and laughter, guilt and grief, cruelty and kindness, all brilliantly executed by Robert Hillman in terrific descriptive prose. A wonderful and extremely worthwhile read.

I received a complimentary digital copy of this novel at my own request from Faber and Faber Ltd via NetGalley. This review is my own unbiased opinion.