The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner

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Outside Alan Sillitoe’s holiday home, I am loading my trusty Renault Express van with the author’s donation of books and papers. A raised English voice pierces the incessant drone of cicadas and Alan Sillitoe rushes out into the sun-baked road. It turns out that I’ve inadvertently removed the wrong pile of books from the hallway. We check the boxes together to find that they contain precious first editions and personal manuscripts. I lug the boxes back and retrieve the items that were destined for me; obscure pamphlets by self-published poets and arcane miscellany.

The property is being sold, a fact relayed to me weeks earlier when I was introduced to the writer at a lunch hosted by a mutual acquaintance. He politely expresses an interest in my new venture — that of setting up a second-hand English bookshop in nearby Montpellier. He tells me that if he hadn’t been able to write books, he would have wanted to sell them. And would I be interested in some free stock…

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