I Found a Piece of Home In a Cat-Filled Roman Bookstore
No matter your location or your zodiacal sign, bookstores somehow make the stars line up
Whenever I’m new to a city, the first place I’m drawn to is a bookstore. Books ground me when living far away from home, offering comfort in uncomfortable moments.
In the twenty-five years I’ve lived outside of the United States, I have always found solace in English-language bookstores overseas. There, I catch my breath, inhale the familiar, and block out the cacophony of a new language. Almost every time I enter an English-language bookstore abroad, I encounter another customer, who, like me, loves words and browses for friendship among them. She’s often missing her own language, too, as she’s struggling to learn a new one.
When I first moved to Italy, I was in my twenties. Homesick for America, I would always find an excuse to pop into Trastevere’s English-language bookstore, one of only two of its kind in Rome in the late nineties. A half-hour in The Corner Bookshop guaranteed a satisfying chat in English and a welcome respite from trying to speak Italian.
The small bookstore was owned and founded by an Australian named Claire Hammond whose cats lined her bookshelves like the dust on her book jacket covers. Tabby cats dozed on biographies; Siamese cats snoozed between mysteries.
My first visit was a week before Christmas, and I was browsing for presents. The bookstore had no aisles to hide behind, and all of its books toppled over each other like crooked teeth. It was a cozy, square space without windows that was the size of a garage in which you could probably squeeze a Fiat 500 and a moped. The cashier introduced herself as Rachel from Vermont. As the only two people in the store, we stumbled into conversation quickly. I discovered that some of her favorite books were mine, too.
She explained to me that she was working at the bookstore temporarily. She would be leaving shortly to begin a job in journalism. She asked if I’d be interested in taking her bookstore job on weekends. Unemployed and newly arrived in Rome, I couldn’t imagine a better way to get acquainted with my new city than by being surrounded by books. She instructed me to return two days later when Claire could interview me.
I believe there’s a story behind every trip made to a bookstore. In some cases, there’s even a friendship waiting to unfold on the shelves, between pages not yet published.
The day I showed up, I found Claire with a Calico dangling off her shoulder like an evening stole. I handed her my resume, and introduced myself as Rachel’s friend, explaining that I was there to apply for her job.
“Well, it’s news to me she’s leaving,” huffed Claire, the tail of a Tabby brushing up against my leg.
I blushed and fumbled for words. She shook her grey-haired head, pulled up her flannel sleeves, and put on her reading glasses to glance at my flimsy resume’ whose post-college internships I had tried to beef up with bulky adjectives.
“You certainly have done enough for someone your age,” she hissed, as if she was really looking for someone with no experience whatsoever.
“Hmmm,” she said, as she scratched her scalp with the eraser at the end of a pencil, and tried to smooth out her wrinkles as she cupped her chin in her hand. “I do have one question for you: what astrological sign are you?”
I puffed up my chest and proudly blurted that I was a Sagittarius.
“I knew it. Hate ‘em,” she said, inhaling on her cigarette whose final butt was millimeters away from landing on a kitten’s paw. “Had to fire the last one here because our stars didn’t align. No chance you’ll get this job.”
She crumpled up my resume’ and tossed it in the trash.
I called Rachel afterward to tell her what had happened, and we laughed all the way to Claire’s looming moon.
Almost every time I enter an English-language bookstore abroad, I encounter another customer, who, like me, loves words and browses for friendship among them.
I never ended up working in that bookstore. But, a few years later, Rachel edited the cultural page of an Italian insert of The International Herald Tribune and commissioned me to write several articles for her.
Over the years, my friendship with Rachel has grown out of our joint love for language and books. We have two lexicons that we dip into as we share stories about our adventures straddling Italy and America. It was the bookstore that baptized our friendship, with Claire as our reluctant godmother.
Claire has since passed away, and her bookstore has a new owner who moved it slightly down the street and renamed it The Almost Corner Bookshop. It’s a lovely spot, tidy and precise in its organization of its tomes. But I miss the cats, the mismatched books, its zany founder, and the corner where an orchestra of American, Australian, American, British, Irish, Scottish, and South African accents buzzed on about expat life in Rome.
I believe there’s a story behind every trip made to a bookstore. In some cases, there’s even a friendship waiting to unfold on the shelves, between pages not yet published. No matter your location or your zodiacal sign, bookstores somehow make the stars line up.
Sheila Pierce is an American writer currently living in Rome, Italy with her husband, two kids, and dog. Her work has appeared in The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and Vogue Italia. Married to an Italian diplomat, she changes countries every four years, with recent postings in Brussels, Tel Aviv, Rome, and San Francisco.
She’s currently writing a book about her life in transit, with many of her international chronicles featured on www.sheilapierce.com.
