A Republic of Books: the novel with play and handy footnotes included

With a narrator not so much unreliable as imperfect, A Republic of Books might be a first refuge for scoundrels and saints. The perfect bookshop might not exist, but then again . . . a nation of books would have to be a republic as much as a state of mind.An opinionated and iconoclastic bookseller, who has managed to live his life on his own terms for forty years while writing books about the things he values most and conducting a sui generis repository of what might be the best of literature, must come to terms at last with an America that has replaced the first amendment with political correctness.Though Michael James McGeraughty lives in something less than an existential world of better words and deeds, the FBI believes he is harboring revolutionaries, the IRS thinks his business practices are questionable, the City of Boston is citing numerous code violations, even as his ex-wife wants him to close so she can sell the building. While his children have long since escaped to live their own lives, and his forthright opinions have made him enemies as well as faithful customers, a jaded and pragmatic reporter writing a story about yet another bookshop closing is finding herself drawn to his idealism.A Republic of Books is a novel of ideas.