A Room Above A Shop is a perfect novel. Written by Cardiff’s Anthony Shapland, the short book is already making a name for itself ahead of its publication — Shapland had been announced as a novelist to look out for in 2025 by the Observer, on an annual list which has in previous years picked out future Booker Prize winners.
The good word is justified. In A Room…, nothing much happens, yet everything does. Two men meet and fall in love – love that, due to the era, politics and geography, can never be celebrated out in the open. The passage of time is marked gently; major historical events are mentioned only in passing, yet somehow manage to deepen the understanding of the story and the life of its protagonists.
Shapland doesn’t waste a single word. Everything is measured, but not laboured, written to perfection in a poetic, enticing prose that catches the reader breathless with its beauty. He creates multiple universes across a single shop floor and the titular room above it, in a small town in Wales, between two people and the traumas that make them. Above everything, A Room Above A Shop is full of beauty, tenderness, love; a true gift. Don’t miss out.
