My current favourite book (other than my latest, "A Striking Woman")
I am halfway through a clever, engaging novel by an American writer named Rebecca Makkai. "The Borrower" (not "The BorrowerS") was published in 2011 and is a thoughtful, witty comedy about a road trip (some would say "kidnapping").
The title is both an echo of "The Borrowers", a work of literature for children about a miniature family surviving in a full s-zed world, and the term "borrower" as used by librarians. Lucy Hull, a newly-fledged children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, has one particularly enthusiastic reader among the kids she serves. A ten year old boy named Ian reads well above his age-level and, in consulting Lucy about books to read, is a librarian's dream-child.
His mother disapproves of many of the books in the children's collection; she doesn't want Ian reading anything to do with magic, Hallowe'en, etc. Lucy checks out books on her own account and gives them to Ian to read. When Ian asks her to take him to his grandmother, Lucy learns that his parents have enrolled him in what sounds like a gay-conversion program at their church, and agrees to drive him there. It turns out that his grandmother lives in Vermont!
Lucy is treading water in her job; she was given it, sight unseen, after writing to a number of alumnae from her university for employment leads. The best thing about the job is the independence if gives her from her parents, in Chicago, particularly her father, who has Russian underworld connections and would have set her up in a cushy job with one of his associates. Being something of a runaway herself, and aware that her father operates outside the law, she gives in to impulse (or perhaps to family tradition) and takes Ian on his quest.
The plot is intriguing, but the characters more so. Lucy, the narrator, tells of this road trip some five years later; I'm reading on to see how she gets herself and Ian out of their predicaments. Her voice is confiding, frank, and like a glimpse into someone else's mind. Her references to kids' literature took me back to my long-ago days as an elementary school teacher. The book is clever. In one passage she borrows the style of "Goodnight Moon", and in another, the rhyme of "The House that Jack Built" to show what is happening.
Among the interesting personalities in the novel are Lucy's alcoholic supervisor, a differently-abled co-worker, her self-centred boyfriend and her parents. En route, Lucy and the boy make a stop to deliver a mysterious package to some friends of her parents who keep ferrets. The husband and father in this household, who, like Lucy's dad, is from Russia, fills Lucy in on some facts about the past which lead her to see her father in a new light.
The main theme of "The Borrower" is the power of books to give us insight into life and help us understand and perhaps solve the dilemmas we face.
I haven't reached the ending, yet. Normally I wouldn't put this good a novel down, but the demands of daily life beckon. Some reviewers have written that "The Borrower" ends, not with a bang but a whimper (cleverly quoting William Faulkner). I'll see.
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