Galway Bay by Mary Pat Kelly…One Of THOSE Books

There are some books that are just fun to have in the bookshop and watch what happens with them. The books I am talking about are the ones that just seem to gather traction and find themselves flying out our door through the power of word of mouth. Examples? I remember when The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards was impossible to keep on our shelves. It wasn’t something that, at first, we heard much about in the press but friends told friends who told friends. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows was similar. It wasn’t a situation where people were seeing some star perennial best-selling writer interviewed on Good Morning America. People were just touched by the book and were talking about it among friends. (Well, actually, in the case of Guernsey I believe that it all started at our bookshop with the glowing recommendation by our own Elizabeth who got the ball rolling, but it doesn’t make my point as well to say so!)

Galway Bay by Mary Pat Kelly is turning into one of THOSE books. The turning point (I refuse to say tipping point!) for me was a comment from an employee this week. Her son is a doctoral student in colonial history at the University of Pennsylvania. He came home to visit this week and said “Mom, I’m reading a book that I think you should have at the bookshop. It’s fantastic”. You could have knocked her over with a bookmark when he pulled out a copy of Galway Bay – a book she was currently in the middle of! This sweeping historical novel seems to appeal to a wide range of people from a variety of ages and backgrounds, men and women. How often can you say that about a 567 page novel???