The Bookshop on the Corner

In The Bookshop on the Corner, Colgan contrasts the anonymity of Birmingham with the tight-knit community of Kirrinfief in the Scottish Highlands to explore the sense of belonging Nina finds in a place that offers connection, support, and the space for internal change. In Birmingham, Nina feels professionally obsolete and personally isolated—a feeling, Colgan suggests, amplified by the city’s impersonal nature. The author uses sensory details, such as the “endless roar of traffic” (23), to highlight Nina’s feelings of overwhelm in the crowded city. As Nina rescues more and more discarded library books, they fill up her shared apartment, eventually cracking the ceiling with their weight. This image mirrors Nina crumbling under the pressure of city life.

The closure of Nina’s library branch and the loss of her job create a crisis that highlights dissatisfaction with her life and her environment and pushes her toward change, both internal and geographic. The library has always provided her with both comfort and purpose, and its replacement by a “multimedia experience zone” (3) symbolizes a shift away from the things Nina most loves and values. Nina notes that “[the library’s] lovely, tatty, old pitched-roof premises [are] being sold off to become executive apartments that would be well beyond the reach of a librarian’s salary” (4).