Jane C. asked Madeline Martin:

I just finished The Last Bookshop in London. Did you intend to draw a parallel to what people are going through now with covid? There are passages in the book about fear and courage that stopped me in my tracks they were so pertinent to today.

Madeline Martin Jane, I apologize - I didn't see this question when you posted it and I'm just not seeing it. I am SO sorry for my six-month delay in replying!

I actually wrote The Last Bookshop in London during the pandemic. It really put such a deep perspective on things for me while I was doing research. While they were two widely separate scenarios, back then (and during the pandemic), there was fear, hoarding, rules set in place for safety, difficulty following all sanctions, loss of loved ones, supply issues. I remember reading a passage stating people would be turned away from the cinema if they didn't have their gas masks on them and I got chills. So, there are some parallels, but only in the way they were applicable to what people genuinely did go through then.

And two confessions: The scene with Mrs. Weatherford hoarding was inspired by a woman I saw at Target one day hurriedly encouraging her children to get all the paper towels and toilet paper "before hoarders got to them" and the garden scene was a take on my own failed experience with gardening during the pandemic (though all the measures to eradicate the garden pests were taken from a pamphlet from 1940 on Digging for Victory).

flag