Hamleys and Gamages

[mtvessel]

May 2019
The Toymakers - Robert Dinsdale – Penguin, 2018 (kindle edition)
* * * *
The author has clearly read The Night Circus and taken notes - not that that is a bad thing. This is a similar book featuring creative people in a magical real-world setting, in this case a London toyshop called Papa Jack's Emporium that opens at the first frost of winter and closes when snowdrops start to push through the ice. It starts with a marvellous evocation of the excitement of a visiting a toy store at Christmas where the tin soldiers salute you as you pass and the hobby horses whinny to be ridden, and continues to describe inventive and magical toys throughout the book. And it manages to tell an affecting story too.

We are introduced to the store and its staff through the eyes of Katherine Wray, a fifteen year old girl who runs away from home after becoming pregnant by her childhood best friend. Poor and destitute, she answers a help wanted advertisement to do sales and stocktaking at the Emporium. There she meets its owner, Jekabs Gottmann, a Russian immigrant, and his sons Emil and Kaspar who are his apprentices. Being of an age, the two young men are both naturally smitten with her, which only exacerbates their sibling rivalry. Meanwhile Kathy is trying to hide the increasing evidence of her shame.

I think that's enough about the plot, other than to say that it becomes a saga, which is a bit of a shame. For as the century advances, events in the real world start to affect the shop and its people and not for the better. But growing up and the different ways in which people do it, is, I think, what this book is about, so the fact that the magic of the opening pages gives way to something else is thematically appropriate. And if, like me, you can remember the childhood excitement of visiting a toyshop like Hamleys or Gamages, then this may be a book for you.