Afterthoughts: Sixpence House by Paul Collins

In a nutshell: Ideal for the kind of person who normally enjoys wiling away hour after hour in dusty old bookshops. Written with a real bookish passion, and containing some truly memorable real-life characters, Sixpence House is the perfect reading fodder for any ravenous bibliophile.

Just as a bull charges towards the matador’s muleta, so I rushed into the pages of Paul Collins’ Sixpence House with an unrestrained eagerness, brought about by the promise of being able to finally explore the ‘sanctuary for book lovers’ that I knew had existed for years – in its form as a ‘magical’ book town located on the border between England and Wales. Couple my excitement at reading Sixpence House with my passion for ‘books about books’, and you can imagine that I’d set my expectations really high before reading this book. The question is how fully were those expectations met?

As one may suppose for an old medieval market town containing 40 book shops (this was at the time of writing. The official website now lists only 28 bookshops, one of which is called Tom’s Record Shop?!? )), and a population consisted primarily of literary intellectuals and deep thinkers, Hay-on-Wye is a place bursting at the seams with colourful characters; rich pickings you may say for the pen of author Paul Collins, an equally colourful ‘bookish’ character who lands in their midst to begin a new life, with endearing wife and small child in tow. Perhaps ‘rich pickings’ is the wrong term to use. That makes it sound as though Collins stormed into Hay-on-Wye wielding a literary ‘sword’, assassinating characters left, right and centre in the name of ‘filler’ for the pages of his book. But rest easy. This turns out not to be the case and although Hay-on-Wye’s colourful characters do indeed fill the pages of Sixpence House, they do so in a warm, respectful and endearing way.

The only character from Sixpence House that I’m going to mention, is the most illustrious one to be found in its pages – the ‘patriarch’ of the Hay ‘family’ Richard Booth, the man largely responsible for turning Hay into the ‘Town of Books’. Reaffirming his status as ‘king’ of Hay, by living in the town’s ‘many times built and invariably destroyed every time’ medieval castle (well it is situated on the Welsh border after all, a stone’s throw (literally) from the marauding English), Booth is seen by many as being rather enigmatic. However Collins succeeds in wafting away some of the mysterious ‘fog’ that shrouds Booth. He unveils a warm(ish) man who is clearly obsessed with books, but also hugely frustrated by them as well.

As far as other characters in the book goes, that’s as much as I’m going to say. I feel the best way of discovering them is to meet them as Collins does, but suffice it to say that Sixpence House does contains a veritable feast of characters that you’re going to love, and the good thing is all of them are real (at least allegedly so )).

Sixpence House is of course not solely about the characters who populate the little Welsh book town. It’s also about Collins and his family and their experiences at being the ‘new kids in town’ as they try to find their feet, and more importantly find somewhere to live. Awaiting the reader are wrestles with the local estate agent, frustrations at the UK’s ‘medieval’ system of property purchase, and the numerous recollections from Collins on working in his new bookish job; all of which keep one turning the pages.

It’s about the place too; the ‘magical’ little bookish ‘kingdom’. And from the domineering presence of Booth’s castle and the ubiquitous bookshops, to the centuries-old houses and the ever-ringing bell on the door of the town’s hunger-sustaining lifeline – the local Spar shop, Collins gives a real sense of the geography of Hay as he navigates his way around it; a ‘sense’ which could probably only be bettered by treading in person through the streets and alleyways of Hay.

The predominant theme of Sixpence House is of course the ‘celebration’ of the book in general. However you won’t find mass-market paperbacks or the latest titles in the 2003 bestseller’s list being spoken about. Collins passion is far more refined than that, and his interest lies in more obscure and antiquated literature, and it is this which is primarily discussed in this book. However, don’t let that be an ‘off-putter’. Collins unearths some delightful gems of literature and discusses them with fervent passion. These are books which I guarantee you’ll have never heard of (probably), but these are also books which I know, like me, you will oh so want to read. How inviting does the 1867 ‘hit’ Robinson Crusoe, in Words of One Syllable by Mary Godolphin sound to you? Or maybe you’d prefer the memorably titled The Wonderful Magazine, and Marvelous Chronicle of Extraordinary Productions, Events, and Occurrences, in Nature and Art (it’s got a 23-word subtitle as well but I refuse to type that up as well ))? They sound wonderful (and Collins makes them sound even more so), and it is from these books, and many more like it, that the author ‘harvests’ the bookish warmness that radiates from the pages of Sixpence House.

I should add that Collins does tend to digress quite a lot from his topic of focus throughout the book; throwing a myriad of different subjects into his narrative. One minute he may be talking about sorting through a mountain of literary titles in some dusty backroom, and the next he goes off on a discussion about UK fuel taxes. It all sounds a bit random and unplanned but it never reads like that. Collins always has a point to his digressions, and instead of taking anything away from the story, his informed and extensive knowledge of ‘stuff’ actually adds to it. His digressions are also often endearingly personal. His UK fuel tax discussion for instance leads on to the revelation that he and his wife have never owned a car, and he goes on to speak about the logistical difficulties this brings up, and more importantly, other people’s reactions to his ‘shocking’ revelation.

As warm as Sixpence House is though it does have its ‘colder’ moments. Collins talks often about the untouched and forgotten mountains of books that are to found boxed up in almost every dark corner and backroom of Hay. There are certain genres that don’t sell and will never sell (Theology seems to be the worst from what I can remember), and these are left to slowly heap up with nobody being really sure what to do with them. The worst-case solution (as far as the books are concerned at least), comes courtesy of Booth, who solves the problem by “heaping up pyres of books in the field behind his castle, dousing them with petrol, and then setting them on fire.” Gulp!

Putting aside the Nazi-esque book burning sessions (the thought of which I’m sure would make any bibliophile break out in a cold sweat), Sixpence House turns out to be a delightful little book, which more than meets those high expectations I’d set before reading it. For those who enjoy nothing more than wiling away the hours in dusty old bookshops, Sixpence House is the ideal accompaniment. For those who love their literary reading to be as obscure as it can be, you’ll love Sixpence House also, not only to ‘wish list’ the author’s ‘recommendations’, but to also wallow in his passion for it; a passion which definitely borders on obsession.

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Book Details
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2003
Format: Paperback
Pages: 242 pages
ISBN: 1582344043