Teaser Tuesdays: People of the Book

This week, my teaser lines come from People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. I'm about a third of the way into this one, and enjoying it so far. This excerpt is from the first section of the book, which sets up the framing story about Hannah, a professional book conservator from Australia, who's been called to Sarajevo and given a rare and beautiful ancient Hebrew manuscript to analyze and preserve. Here, Hannah is discussing the materials and routines used in conserving and restoring antique volumes:

In the bright snow light, my hands looked even worse than usual, all ruddy and peeling from scouring the fat off cow gut with a pumice stone. When you live in Sydney, it's not the simplest thing in the world to get a meter of calf's intestine. [p.5]

See, the calf's intestine is for using in the preparation of gold leaf - that is, if you're going to beat your own gold leaf the way a medieval bookbinder would have done it. Ah, well, conservation and archival work may not be the most glamorous undertaking I can think of, but I find it fascinating and always thought I'd missed my calling by not going into that field. But that bit about the cow gut is making me think I might not have been up to the task after all.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.