Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Book Store Review

William McConico

Mr Davidson

Contemporary Literature, 2nd Period 

 September 13th , 2023

AMDG 

Penumbra Book Review

*spoiler alert Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan is a mysterious 21st century novel that follows Clay Jannon navigating Mr. Penumbra’s mysterious bookstore. Clay gets this job after seeing a flier in the window of the store, and coming in to get the job. He accepted the mysterious job, with horrible night hours, as it was the 2008 recession and he just needed a job. When employed by Mr. Penumbra is told to write detailed descriptions of the customers, be extremely punctual, and to never ever read the books. Clay lives with his roommates Matt and Ashley, with the former being super artsy and the latter being very organized. When Matt comes in and looks at some of the books, Clay realizes there is more to the store, and begins his investigation. During this investigation, he meets the beautiful Kat, who is a Google employee and a huge tech enthusiast. Along the way, the audience is also introduced to Neel Shah, Clay’s super rich childhood friend, and many other enigmatic characters. With a layered mystery and smart callbacks to the beginning of the novel, Penumbra’s is a wild ride that keeps the audience on their feet from start to finish.

The relationships in the book are very relatable, in that they show how more modern friendships and relationships work, more than any other novel I have read. This includes the romantic relationships and the intimate friendships seen in the novel. As a person who has nerdy interests and hobbies, a lot of my childhood friends were formed through a common bond of these nerdy activities. Even if we no longer are into that stuff anymore, those shared bonds and experiences can last a lifetime. Seeing this with Neel and Clay was almost surreal, as I felt as though I was almost reading about me and my best friend's friendship in a novel. Also, Kat and Clay’s relationship was extremely relatable to a young person like me who is accustomed to dating in this digital age. Clay saying that he was “looking across the city at her sleeping form, lit only by the  gray light of her laptop” might sound corny or creepy to an older person (Sloan, 74). To me, however, going to sleep on the phone is a normal relationship thing that people do when they are in relationships nowadays. Again, just reading about these interpersonal relationships that I can relate to my life as a teen makes me excited to read the book, and more likely to recommend it to someone my age.

The book has large ideas on modern technology vs old technology, which is something that is not usually discussed much in literature. Many new books are very pro new technology, but don’t really show the value of the old technology. This novel heavily focuses on using modern technology to crack the secret codes of the past, as it is shown many times in the novel that modern technology can be used to make things move quicker. Whether it is Clay’s 3-D model, his coupon, or even Kat’s tech expertise finding the Unbroken Spine, tech can do wonders. The novel doesn’t want this to take away from the value of the Old Technology though. After all of the Google tampering and decoding, Clay finally realizes that “Gerritszoon is the key” (Sloan, 274). With the big box, and all of the otherworldly technology that Google possessed, it was the seemingly worthless five hundred year old punches that solved this puzzle. The message Sloan is trying to send is that with the rise of technology, using methods that have been around forever is never a negative. Picking up a real book over a kindle or your phone is sometimes the best option, and that is ok and shouldn’t be seen as a negative,

With all of the good that it entails, Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore is by no means a perfect novel. It definitely drags after the second part, once the majority of the mystery of the secret society is revealed. Also, even if it does send a good message, the ending to the novel feels very corny and Disney. On that note, the actual reveal of the mystery was very underwhelming, and made the whole mystery solving feel somewhat fruitless. This was clearly the author's intended effect, but this kind of ending will definitely fall deaf on many ears. The other two thirds of the novel, however, were largely captivating, and for large parts of it it was hard to put the novel down. The best part was by far the main character’s trip to New York in part two, which featured the most mysteries, the highest stakes, and some amazing character moments. Although the ending may not be for everyone, the novel is definitely worth a read for everything else. Three and a half stars out of five.