Review: Enjoyable, suspenseful short story based on an original idea
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 28, 2013
I enjoyed this short story which has an original twist on the idea of "getting into a book." The story is fast paced, has interesting well-drawn characters, sexual tensions, and humorous elements, although it is a horror story. A thirty-two year old woman enters a strange book store to kill time while waiting for her children, which turns out to be a magical store that does not sell books or allow patrons to take books from the store. The books are magical, and the very friendly seventyish male owner with black painted finger-nails, who serves patrons tea, sells time for reading in one of three rooms. (Note the number three that has no important significance in this tale, but is the magical number used in the Bible and fairy tales frequently.) He tells the woman that he reads the books carefully before giving them to patrons, and he doesn't give them dangerous books, and he tears out dangerous pages of books he gives them, so that they do not get hurt. Will she be willing to buy time? What does this mean? What happens in the three rooms?