The Bookshop on the Quay -

Patricia Lynch

The Bodley Head

1986

186 páginas

6h 12m

ISBN-10: 0370307364

It all starts when Shane Madden's Uncle Tim, a cattle drover, buys him a copy of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Orphan Shane's cousins defile the book, his prize possession, and in a fit of proud pique he tosses it into the flames.

Then Uncle Tim doesn't return from Ballybricken Fair, and Shane's determination to find him takes him from Waterford to Dublin. And that in itself is some adventure, as Shane encounters travellers and lorry drivers.

Is it coincidence that Eugene O'Clery and his family, owners of the dusty Four Masters Bookshop on Dublin's quays, befriend the young book lover? Mr O'Clery is a bookseller who hates to part with good books.

Shane works in the shop while he searches Dublin to track down Uncle Tim. Mysteries multiply. Does Shane really meet Jonathan Swift in his night-time adventure when he follows little Bridgie O'Clery who has stolen out to search for her doll?

Things go disastrously wrong when flames engulf the bookshop, and Bridgie trembles on an upstairs windowsill. But Uncle Tim comes to the rescue, and the damage is not as calamitous as was feared.

This wonderful book was first published in 1956 and has been out of print for some time. Its theme is familiar to Patricia Lynch readers: a homeless, neglected child seeking - and eventually finding - security and the affection of a real family.

As a young women, Lynch worked as a reporter and covered the 1916 Rising. Her final years were spent in the care of the famous puppeteering Lambert family in Dublin.