53 pages • 1-hour read
Battle of the Bookstores
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide features mentions of childhood neglect and depression.
Minimalism vs. Clutter
The minimalistic tidiness of Tabula Inscripta, juxtaposed against the chaotic clutter of Happy Endings, symbolizes the hold Josie’s past still has over her present. When she first walks into Happy Endings, she finds the place a disaster of overflowing shelves and books stacked in piles on the floor. The cluttered space reminds her of her childhood apartment, triggering anxiety and claustrophobia. After Georgia’s accident, “the place was a safety hazard: spoiled food in the fridge, trash overflowing, junk everywhere” (75), and it took a week of cleaning and decluttering before Georgia could navigate the place in her wheelchair. The instant transportation of Josie’s memories to the past upon witnessing the chaotic state of Happy Endings shows that she hasn’t overcome the wounds of her past.
Josie’s own store, Tabula Inscripta is, in Ryan’s words, organized “more like a museum than a bookstore” (18). There are no curated tables, no special sections to highlight certain titles, and no face-out covers. There are only spines, all aligned in perfect alphabetical order on the shelves. While Josie exists comfortably in this space, Ryan thinks she looks lonely and that her store is sterile, boring, and lifeless. Though a lot of work has clearly gone into her store, the presentation is too clean to have any personality. Such excessive order is not conducive to business, either: It makes it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for, but difficult for them to linger and make new discoveries. By the time Josie has come to terms with her past at the end of the novel, she acknowledges that “the way it used to be before construction started”—“neat and orderly, cozy and safe, the perfect place to rebuild [her] confidence after [her] life fell apart”—is starting to feel small and lonely (375). This shift in outlook symbolizes Josie overcoming her past.
Books and Reading
Josie repeatedly frames people, things, or occurrences in her life by comparing them to books, a motif that symbolizes The Benefits and Dangers of Literary Escapism. When she chats anonymously online with RJ, she relates it to “reading a good book, the kind you can’t wait to get back to—but even better because we’re writing it together as we go. There’s no pressure, no awkward pauses; I can take my time with my replies and savor every word of his” (113). This comfort contrasts with the anxiety Josie experiences while interacting with Ryan in person. Everything online moves at the pace she’s comfortable with, and she can be vulnerable without risking self-disclosure, placing her relationship with RJ into the “safe” realm of make-believe.
Josie even admits that she almost “forgot that RJ isn’t a fictional character” but rather a “fully formed human with his own motivations and expectations” (267). They are characters “in a story of our own making, with no real-world complications to muddy the waters. It’s comfortable and exciting all at once” (113). Josie doesn’t feel the pressure of real-life consequences when communicating online. While this does allow her to open up more emotionally than she ever has, the limits of this way of living become apparent when she is unwilling to meet RJ in person. Meeting in person would make their growing relationship “real,” which is too much for Josie to handle.
Tabula Inscripta
The name of Josie’s bookstore, Tabula Inscripta, tells a story of transformation through experiences. The name itself symbolizes the benefits of reading. As Josie explains to Ryan, the Latin phrase “tabula rasa” means “blank slate” and the original owner “told [her] that it’s a theory that we’re born without any built-in knowledge, and all our experiences shape who we become” (264). The phrase tabula inscripta means the opposite: an inscribed tablet, rather than a blank one. For the store’s original owner, this name evoked the desire to “capture how every book leaves its mark on us, constantly adding new ideas, stories, and insights. A mind continually in progress […] with infinitely more to be added” (264). Therefore, the bookstore itself encompasses the infinite possibilities that reading can bring to the lives of readers. Reading offers the opportunities to transform oneself, to grow, to change, to learn.
Josie later thinks longer on the name of her bookstore and the meaning behind it. She notes how “all the stories [she’s] read have been [her] teachers, sheltering [her] when [she] needed comfort, making life richer, showing [her] how to face adversity” (376). She finds comfort in knowing that books, like experiences, heartbreaks, and failures, also have an impact on the person she’s become. The characters she’s encountered through fiction have taught her just as much as the people she’s met. Similarly, the fictional narratives she’s lived have encouraged growth in some of the same ways her life experiences have.
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