The Shops

I love shopping and not just for books. Bookshops, cookshops, or department stores, I love to be laden down with colourful bags. I am a big shopper especially in the lead-up to Christmas when I take great pleasure in seeking out the perfect gifts for loved ones. I also enjoy online shopping, which is a wonderful invention. The Shops by India Knight is a fun, useful guide to shopping with recommendations interspersed with irreverent wit and anecdotes.

As well as physical shops Knight covers mail and web order capable shops (including Persephone Books). For the most part, this book is of particularly good reference to those living in the UK, especially those in London, but whilst reading it I thought of my Anglo-adoring friends across the pond who would find some of the recommended shops as providing them a home away from their imaginary home.

Knight celebrates shopping and her love of it but is inclusive of those who don't share her passion as there are people out there who don't like shopping, you know. However, everyone has to shop in some capacity -whether it be simply for food- and this a great resource for making it easier. The Shops covers beauty shopping (including hair, make-up, and where to receive that best facial or brow-shape) to what to look for in a wedding dress -a personal choice when it comes to the shop- to organic butchers; it is a comprehensive guide to all types of shopping.

Although I love shopping and noted down some recommended shops and sites to visit and ideas for gifts and pucrhases, what I enjoyed most about this book was its conversational tone and its allusions to literature. To a certain extent this book was also a book about books as well as shops. In her introduction Knight recalls that her grandfather "taught me how to stand in bookshops, appreciatively sniffing the air before diving in - this was in the days when bookshops were small and didn't smell of Starbucks." Reading this line I knew that India Knight was a kindred spirit and there followed several literary references that spoke to me more than any to Imelda de Marcos would have done. I found allusions such as "rather in the manner of a Barbara Pym heroine finally finding love with a curate" and "don't forget Penhaligon's Bluebell-though no one who's read I Capture the Castle ever could" endearing but can see it as potentially distancing to a non literary shopper (and they exist too). However, for anyone picking up this book who may not be a big reader, they are opened up to a selection of great books with a whole "box" (a section of recommendations, on this occasion two pages) devoted to "bed books" those books "particularly blissful to read in bed, as in comfort books - not as in the best books ever written". The list includes some Persephones, Virago Modern Classics, classics, beloved Children's novels. and some bodice rippers. I Capture the Castle is described as "[v]ery probably number one comfort-read of all time-and, if not dipped into since adolescence, much darker than you remember it."

These heartwarming sections were the highlight of this reading experience, one that only took a couple of hours. The Shops combines high culture -an allusion to Mrs Dalloway in a section on the joyful and therapeutic buying of flowers- with low culture -uncomfortable reference to Knight's father and stepmother's orgies and one surprising illustration of vibrators in the sex shop section- that isn't entirely balanced. Knight certainly plays to a readership of potentially every type of shopper and hence person, which is certainly the wisest course in regards to sales, but overall I would have preferred one cohesive approach; saying that, Knight obviously loves shopping and had intensely researched every shopping section so the mixing of cultural idioms is likely a representation of her likes and expectations of an all-encompassing guide.

Some of the tips given in this book I have noted down and will be sharing. Recently my aunt and uncle -who are expecting their first child- visited the baby department in the store John Lewis and completely overwhelmed by the sheer scale of products and variety (vests/babygrows/onesies some with poppers on the sleeves, some without, some with long sleeves and some with short or none at all, completely flummoxed them) they left and went for pizza instead; I wonder whether they would fare at least somewhat better with the mother and child shop recommendations provided in the book.

I did find a fair share of the shops featured as high-end but when I am more solvent I intend to visit. India Knight does attempt to be inclusive though and features some high-street stores, defends Ikea against snobbery, and devoted an entire box to her praise of Argos (the catalogue shop where you order and collect in store after waiting in a horrendous queue for your number to be called); I have to disagree with her like for Argos though as I actually think it is a hell dimension here on earth. The book was originally published by Penguin in 2003, with an edited edition in 2004, so I'm not sure how many of the listings are potentially out-of-date.

A passage I liked to give you a sense of the writing style:

I really think it's such a pity that a delight in food should be seen by some as a problem, or indicative of 'issues', or even as an illness. I mention it because I resent, I suppose, the idea that our family's absolute love of food should be seen by anybody as peculiar or wrong, when I consider it to be absolutely joyous, generous, nurturing, celebratory, and all those other words you might find used about food in a magical realism novel (remember them?) involving recipes.