THE BOOK-SHOP OF THE BROKEN HEARTED by Robert Hillman

It is 1968, in Hometown, central Victoria. Not a lot happens here in this farming/rural community. The population is stable, everyone knows everyone else's business, families have lived here, either in town or on the farms for some generations. Newcomers are a curious and suspicious phenomenon. Tom Hope farms the land his uncle left him. It is typical Aussie farm land - dry, dusty, sparse, requiring hard work and dedication. He hasn't had much luck in the love department, with his wife Trudy leaving him, returning with a baby (not Tom's), leaving him with baby Peter, then returning a few years later to claim him for good. Tom is broken hearted. A life of continuous disappointment and loss.

Hannah Babel is Hungarian, a survivor of Auschwitz, the apocalypse that was post war Europe, and the anti communist uprising in Budapest in 1956. She also is broken hearted, having lost two husbands and her young son. Not to mention the rest of her family. Unlike Tom she is absolutely unable to internalise any of her pain, heartbreak, loss, but she has the most amazing spirit and energy. Having arrived in Hometown she is determined this is going to be her new beginning - she is going to open a book shop and will not rest until she has sold 'twenty- five thousand, the number of books burnt in Berlin on May 10th, 1933'.  Unsurprisingly the likes of Hannah has never been seen in Hometown - she is a source of much intrigue, gossip, some cattiness, and curiosity.  She enlists Tom to help her fit out the shop, a love affair blossoms, things look to be on the up for Tom and Hannah much to the amusement of the locals.

All good things take time and with wild differences between these two, derailment is not far away. The day comes when the deep grief that Hannah suffered on the loss of her son confronts her with the need for young Peter to return to Tom's care. What will she do? What will Tom do? Such is the skill of the author that you sympathise and empathise with both Tom and Hannah. And as for Peter....  The dilemma - both emotionally and morally - is so delicately handled, so carefully revealed and explained that you keep reading because you really have no idea how it is all going to work out. Although you secretly expect that is will be ok in the end.....

I read this over a wet weekend, it is heart breaking, but as with so much of the fiction that has come out of the stories of WWII, it is full of hope, determination, and joy. Both Tom and Hannah are wonderful characters, very real, flawed, disagreeable, at odds with each other - imagine laconic rural Aussie farmer with firebrand Holocaust survivor. I hope there is a movie on the cards somewhere.