The Librarian

 

    There's much to enjoy in Salley Vickers' The Librarian, a small-canvas story of an English town in 1958.

    Sylvia Blackwell arrives to take up the position of Children's Librarian, aiming to revitalise the outdated collection and instil in her young clientele a love of reading. She comes up against entrenched attitudes, a strict social order, snobbery and prejudice, but also finds neighbourly solidarity, unlikely allegiances, and love - of a sort. What happens during Sylvia's tenure in East Mole threatens to split the community, but also has far-reaching consequences for those she has inspired.

    It starts off promisingly with reference to Sylvia's own childhood experience of encountering fictional characters who were "a shaping influence and an inner guide", and in so far as the children in the novel similarly find role models or discover new worlds - of one sort or another - within the books they read, that theme is worked through, but elsewhere there is some unsubtle soapbox stuff, and then fascinating ideas such as elective affinities*, so-called irrelevant DNA, psychic communication, and JBS Haldane, are mentioned in passing and left by the way. Plot-wise there's a lot riding on Sylvia, but does this self-appointed "angel of enlightenment" have the personal heft to support the role? I'm not sure that she does, though perhaps she's intended to be less driving force than driven one.

    As to the books which figure, Tom's Midnight Garden is prominent, and there's a helpful list of "East Mole Library recommended reading", itself a snapshot of an age, at the back. That in the novel's short Part Two we discover the very best extent of the ripple effect an early exposure to literature can have is a fitting - and neat - ending to what at times is a slightly meandering story, but a good one nonetheless.

    

*See also.

Comments

[Anne]

I really agree with you. I had been looking forward to reading this book, but found as I read on I was becoming a bit bored with the story and actually losing interest in some of the characters. I felt disappointed or maybe I missed something. I did finish this book, and appreciated what you describe as the ripple effect of literature.

[Cornflower]

Yes, my interest waned somewhere around the middle, then I read the last 100 or so pages in no time, but overall - and I must be sounding like a cracked record now as I say this so often - I think it needed a firmer editorial hand.

[Fran H-B]

I listened to this as an audio book, hoping for a good story to listen to. Like many who read here the thought of a novel involving a librarian was enticing. Whilst I too persevered until the end I was rather underwhelmed by it. Like you I enjoyed the 'literary' side but overall was disappointed especially from a writer who in past books has had me totally engrossed.

[Cornflower]

I hope this makes some sense, but it felt to me at times as though SV wasn't quite sure which 'key' she was writing in.

[Dark Puss]

A pretty lukewarm recommendation is how I read your summary! Intrigued by your phrase (or perhaps it is a quote) so-called irrelevant DNA. The primary role of DNA was discovered in 1944 (but the paper was not widely read or appreciated) but it was not until rather later that scientists really began to appreciate the key role of DNA in heredity.

So in a book set in 1958 I would be very surprised to read of anyone outside of biosciences using the word. Can you enlighten me here?

[Dark Puss]

Ah the challenges of mean-tone versus equal temperament.

[Cornflower]

I enjoyed it more than 'lukewarm' would suggest, but I do have reservations!
Re. DNA, SV has a rather interesting, under-developed, though somewhat out of place (I'd say) character who had worked with and been a lover of Haldane's. This Miss Crake is talking to Sylvia about 'Tom's Midnight Garden':
"I was most interested in the link between the old woman - who was once the girl whom Tom meets in the garden - and the boy himself. It is a quite remarkable example of the pioneering work I had embarked on at U.C.L. We could never prove it but my hunch was that with certain people there is a correspondence, an affinity, between the ninety-eight per cent so-called "irrelevant" element of their DNA, which enables a kind of communication referred to as psychic and as a consequence dismissed by materialists."
Sylvia nods off at this point so we don't get to learn more!

[Cornflower]

Indeed!

[LizF]

I don't think it is Salley Vickers' best book, but I did enjoy it and it pushed me into reading both Tom's Midnight Garden and At The Back of The North Wind - neither of which I read as a child.
I agree with you about the editing issue though, something that has occurred to me frequently reading recently published books,, and the attractiveness of the hardback edition.