Talking in the Library

Earlier this week, I finished 'The Library of Unrequited Love' by Sophie Divry, translated from the original French by Sian Reynolds. It's a short book and, with a bit of effort, I managed to read it in 24 hours. Seemed the least I could do bearing in mind it wasn't on my original list... Ahem.

'The Library of Unrequited Love' is one side of a conversation.  One morning, a provincial librarian

'The Library of Unrequited Love'
By Sophie Divry
(MacLehose Press, 2014)

comes into work to find a reader sleeping among her basement shelves. At first surprised, then defensive, then loquacious, she begins to share her opinions on everything from the Dewey Decimal System to customer service, literary snobbery to her admiration for a regular visitor. Intelligent yet confused, passionate but trapped, she finally has a captive audience for her thoughts and observations.

I liked this book because it was unusual. It is, as it's cover says, a diversion, a little novelty that gets you thinking about the nature of narrative and story structure. The first person monologue made getting sucked into the librarian's story very easy. By the end, I didn't want to leave her as she felt like a real person in need of friendship and support. Soppy but true.

Throughout I found myself imagining the whole novella as a play and I really think it would work very well on stage.  Hopefully someone somewhere has plans for a production.

Overall, this book would be of interest to writers because of the narrative style used and librarians.  After all, how could anyone working in such a strongly stereotyped profession not be interested in this latest portrayal?  I think this would also be a good choice for a book group as, even though it's a short work, it leaves much to discuss about how easy it is to loose sight of the people we see everyday, isolation and the purpose of public libraries.

Now, back to Dr. Crystal!