Ignore the violet cover with glitter.

Think Virago of tomorrow.  Someone can design a better cover.

Imagine a better cover.

I am reading several middlebrow American women’s novels this year, and my  Pick of the Week, or maybe two weeks,  is Anjali Banerjee’s charming novel, Haunting Jasmine.  If you haven’t worked in a bookstore, it will make you wonder why you didn’t abandon your profession to open people’s lives with books.

Two-thirds well-written comedy and one-third romance, Banerjee’s feather-light novel describes the transformation of unhappy Jasmine Mistry, a beautiful Eastern Indian woman raised in the Pacific Northwest whose divorce has left her emotionally numb and insecure about her high-powered financial job.  When her aunt asks her to mind her bookstore for a month on Shelter Island while she goes to India, Jasmine jumps at the chance.

But Jasmine needs a cell phone connection for her job at all times, hard to get on the island, and believes a bookstore is a business.  She thinks she can increase her aunt’s profits by soulless business practices.  She tells us:

“[My aunt] promised me refuge among the classics, although I haven’t had time to read a novel in years…. The weight of technology pulls on the shoulder strap.  I barely have room for the usual supplies–compact, lipstick, tissue, aspirin, allergy pills, charge cards, receipts, and a bundle of keys, including the one that opens the exercise room at the office.  Not a single novel, and yet, what do I have to lose?  How hard can it be to sell the latest Nora Roberts or Mary Higgins Clark?”

Books are just entertainment, she thinks.

She says the dusty, shabby store needs bright lights and best-sellers.  Tony, her fellow bookstore clerk, tries to explain that the customers like the antiques and eclecticism.

Her aunt proudly explains a desk belonged to E. B. White, the candle-holders to Jane Austen, and the mirror to Dickens.

What Jasmine doesn’t understand is that the bookstore is haunted.

And after she stays the night at her parents’ instead of at Auntie’s, the ghosts show they’re disturbed.

Gradually, Jasmine begins to understand what a bookstore is, and realizes that voices are telling her what the right book is for the individual customer.

Tony says she has to moderate the book group, and she thinks the women are very silly, but suddenly comes up with just the right question about Pride and Prejudice, which she hasn’t read in years.  The women thanks her.  She is also a success with the children’s story group after  she switches from The House at Pooh Corner, which makes them cry, to The Tale of Peter Rabbit and dons bunny ears.

But the most important thing?  She falls in love with Connor Hunt, a doctor who has worked in Africa. When she finds a memoir with a photo of Connor Hunt who looks just like him, she assumes it is his father.

But…

The last third of the novel, the romance part, is a little hesitant and less compelling, but overall I enjoyed this moving novel a lot.  I love Jasmine’s voice and her bookish transformation.

And if you have a favorite bookstore novel, let me know.