Touch of Grey

On the south side of Harbord Street, in Toronto, there used to be a small ground-floor bookshop, the white paint peeling around the trim of the dust-caked front window. It was open at erratic hours. Sometimes I’d swing by after school, and if I was lucky, the owner would unlock the door, a grudgingly unfolded look in his eyes, his white beard crooked from sleep. Wordlessly, he’d return to the single bed in the back, sit atop a wool blanket, and light his pipe while I quietly browsed the unruly shelves. The smell was more pungent than in other used bookstores in the city. Beyond the usual mould and dust, there were layers of stale and fresh tobacco smoke, a hint of urine, and something intangible — an aroma that seemed to have been carried over from another century.

Ray Robertson’s Estates Large and Small is written against the backdrop of such a place, in all its vanishing...