The Bookseller at the End of the World

It is often hard to reconcile someone you meet briefly, in (relatively) old age with the story of their life. I briefly met Ruth Shaw (but not husband Lance) at her Two Wee Bookshops at Manapouri when on a trip down south. I didn't have an in depth conversation - there were a number of people manoeuvring for position in the small shop, while she waited outside - nearer to the children's bookshop than the one I was in. It isn't generally possible to tell what a person has been through in their life from how the present to you - much like a book and its cover.

This is a simply presented book with alternating chapters on Ruth's autobiographic tales and of short anecdotes about her customers from the bookshop. This book took me through the range of emotions - some of the experiences in the author's life were brutal, and it must have taken a lot of bravery to have shared them in such a detailed manner. Some of her experiences have been adventurous and dangerous, and therefore exciting, but wow, they would have been terrifying at times too. She also shows her determination and ability to succeed in spite of the odds against her.

I wouldn't like to spoil this for other readers, but among her many adventures, those mentioned on the back of the book are only few - being held up by pirates in the seas of Indonesia in a small yacht, working in Kings Cross (Sydney) with prostitutes and drug addicts tied her up with the NSW corruption charges against the vice cops who ran the drug dealers and were responsible for the murders of people who got in the way (many were given long prison terms when internal affairs concluded the Wood Royal Commission).

The author has always had a connection with the sea, and that runs through her autobiography, from her time in the Navy, crewing on various yachts, solo journeys in her own yacht, skippering boats for Fiordland travel (Real Journeys) around Doubtful Sound, Milford Sound & Lake Manapouri and setting up her own ecology tourism business with Lance in Fiordland and the subantarctic islands. She also had a huge list of land based jobs all over New Zealand as well as Papua New Guinea and Australia, often as a cook, but also other more diverse things such a her time running a pig farm and as mentioned above a youth welfare officer.

I am trying really hard not to spoil other things in here, so will leave it at that, but keep an eye out for a copy of this one if you are visiting New Zealand, I can't see how you won't be enthralled by it the way I was.

5 stars