The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

Ostensibly, Katarina Bivald's The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, is the story of a twenty-something Swedish woman, Sara Lindqvist, who strikes up an improbable, long-distance friendship with the elderly Amy Harris of Broken Wheel, Iowa, bonding over their shared love of books. Having lost her job in a small bookshop when it closed, Sara accepts Amy's invitation to visit Iowa and discover life in small town America.

Sara arrives in Broken Wheel to discover Amy Harris is dead. This is no Agatha Christie plot, though. Amy, it seems, had been sick for some time and her correspondence with Amy was one of her last true pleasures; she failed to disclose her illness for fear of dissuading Sara from making the trip.

Sara, understandably, was stunned by Amy's death and moreso by the insistence of Amy's friends and neighbors that she stay in Amy's house for the planned visit. Slowly, Sarah becomes increasingly ingrained in the life of the town and lives of its inhabitants to the extent that neither she nor they can imagine her departing when her visa expires.

Ostensibly.

More than anything, though, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is a book about books. It is a book for and about people who prefer the company of books to that of other humans. Anyone who has ever loved reading so much that they've turned down an invitation or marinated in the stew of so-many-books, so-little-time will be able to relate to Sara and Amy. Sara muses on using books to hide from life and also on whether her life, so dominated and defined by books was "really enough," thoughts I'd wager only the most committed of bibliophiles can likewise claim.

I want to add, too, that The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is the story of life in tiny-town America and, in particular, the ways that life is disappearing. Bivald has done an excellent job of capturing the zeitgesit, characterized so often by an all-consuming angst, which is all the more impressive given that she is Swedish. (The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is actually an English translation of a Swedish original.)

All-in-all, this book is outstanding and one I can easily and happily recommend to anyone looking for a good work of fiction. Happy reading!