Tbr: The Borrower

 

    The second new arrival today is The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai, "a fabulous debut novel about the stories we read and the ones we tell ourselves...". It features a librarian and a young boy who is obsessed with reading, and tells what happens when they take to the road.

    Lucy Hull is a children's librarian in a Missouri town; she helps her favourite patron, 10-year-old Ian Drake, smuggle books past his overbearing and somewhat extreme-sounding mother, but then she finds Ian has apparently run away from home and is camped out in the library with a knapsack of provisions and an escape plan. Lucy allows herself to be hijacked by Ian and the two embark on a road trip from Missouri to Vermont, but who or what, exactly, are they fleeing, and who is the strange man on their tail?

    Richard Russo says of this book, "Rarely is a first novel as smart and engaging and learned and funny and moving as The Borrower".

    It will be out next month, but meanwhile do click on the picture to enlarge it as I think the cover is a good one.