Starting a wonderful new chapter

The healing power of a good book is something most of us will have experienced at some point in our life.

But for Lynne Main it was the act of buying a store filled with books that helped her to heal and create a beautiful new path to take following the death of her husband.

Lynne was ready for a reset, making the decision to leave Melbourne behind and start afresh as the new owner of Torquay Books, which she purchased in the July of 2018.

Standing behind the counter of her little pocket of Gilbert Street, smile beaming, it is clear Lynne has found her happy place surrounded by stories and loyal staff who share her love of the written word.

“I thought ‘if there is going to be a big change in my life, let’s just change everything – change where you live and change your job’,” she recalls.

“I don’t know how I managed to come across it being for sale but it was just the right time. It was a leap of faith.

“I didn’t really know what to expect, to be honest, it was a steep learning curve and nothing like my previous job as a business manager at a special school.

“It was overwhelming but it was amazing to have such a huge challenge and something different for me to really concentrate on, considering what had just happened.

“I was working out what life looked like by myself.

“It was really good to have a distraction, something that I could really work on at home, as well as here, and get to know how everything operated.”

It proved to be a blessing, which Lynne says has been partly thanks to the ongoing support of previous owner Rosemary and her husband Ed, together with her highly valued staff who she describes as a “font of knowledge”.

“My staff are just amazing in their creativeness and the ideas they come up with,” she says.

“With things like the window displays I just let them go for it, I have a little bit of input every now and then, but mostly it’s them.
“Being here is lovely. It’s such a satisfying job that it just makes you feel good. It’s worked really well for me and I’m very grateful.”

Lynne – a mother of three and grandma to two – says owning the book shop has also led her to read books she may never have picked up otherwise, beyond her love of crime novels.

Amid the hard work involved, she says the rewards are immense when you see happy customers.

“The loveliest thing about working out in the shop, especially on weekends, is the beautiful comments you get all the time.

“People will say ‘oh, this is such a lovely shop’.

“It was wonderful also when we came out of lockdown and the people from Melbourne were able to travel back down again and they walked in and their faces lit up saying ‘I haven’t been in here for so long, this is so nice’.”

She gets teary when chatting about the way the community rallied around the store during the pandemic.

“The support from our community during all of COVID has been amazing and so beautiful and so appreciated, it nearly makes me want to cry,” she says.

“We worked pretty hard to help people out as well.

“I was driving around for an hour at the end of each day delivering books to the houses of people who couldn’t come out.

“It feels like it has been a bit of a blur the past few years with all of the little struggles we’ve had to go through.

“But throughout all of that my staff have been amazing and so supportive and rallied around saying ‘we can do this’.

“The community as well were saying ‘we are here for you, we don’t want you to close, we really need you’.

“You kind of feel that love and it makes you able to keep going when things are tough, it really does.”

Lynne has both the award-winning shopfront and an online store which she is thankful went online just prior to COVID.

She says many people turned to books during the pandemic and they have also seen a resurgence in book reading among a younger audience thanks to the #Booktok community on Tik Tok.

Torquay Books has also become a popular destination for anyone wanting to buy a thoughtful present.

“You can come and buy a gift for anybody, any age, male or female – there is a book somewhere in the shop that will suit that person.

“It’s just a matter of finding it or us helping you to find it.”

Torquay Books is at 14B Gilbert Street and on the website. Follow on Instagram @torquaybooks