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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
The premise of this book is pretty off the wall and I have a hard time relating to drifting, twenty something characters, but I found the writing style and literary allusions in this book delightful. Also, can't fault a book arguing that reading can change lives.
I was a little iffy on this one at first. I was won over though.
Quick summary: liberal librarian accidentally kidnaps a ten-year old library patron. tree hugging and russian mafioso ensue.
SPOILERS AHOY AHOY!
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I really hated the narrator of this novel. I'm a liberal and her self-righteous ultra-liberalism bothered even me! But the author makes a point in the first few sentences to tell us we're not supposed to like her. She makes her point stronger by having her anti-heroine tell the reader herself that the story does not paint her well.
The unfolding of the accidental kidnapping is done very realistically to me. The justifications for Miss Hull's decisions can easily be chalked up to the fact that she isn't fully participatory in her life. I very much enjoyed reading these passive aggressive reasons for not returning a young child back to his parents, because I have often found myself using similarly flawed logic to do what I want to do.
It was an enjoyable read. Especially after the gawky first few chapters. It was evident to me that this was Makkai's first novel. But I'll be reading her next one, because I could tell she was coming into her own as I read.
Quick summary: liberal librarian accidentally kidnaps a ten-year old library patron. tree hugging and russian mafioso ensue.
SPOILERS AHOY AHOY!
.
.
.
.
I really hated the narrator of this novel. I'm a liberal and her self-righteous ultra-liberalism bothered even me! But the author makes a point in the first few sentences to tell us we're not supposed to like her. She makes her point stronger by having her anti-heroine tell the reader herself that the story does not paint her well.
The unfolding of the accidental kidnapping is done very realistically to me. The justifications for Miss Hull's decisions can easily be chalked up to the fact that she isn't fully participatory in her life. I very much enjoyed reading these passive aggressive reasons for not returning a young child back to his parents, because I have often found myself using similarly flawed logic to do what I want to do.
It was an enjoyable read. Especially after the gawky first few chapters. It was evident to me that this was Makkai's first novel. But I'll be reading her next one, because I could tell she was coming into her own as I read.
3.5 stars. All of the elements for a great escape read are here: quirky and endearing ten year old boy, a 26 year old children's librarian name Lucy, a road trip, some cute dialogue, lots of books, Russian heritage, humor. But the road trip just drrraaaagggged for me. It felt rambling and directionless; Lucy's thoughts and interpretation of their quest meandered. It took me a week to finish this "quick read."
Rebecca Makkai's third novel,"The Great Believers," is one of my favorites-moving, epic, important, impossible to put down. "The Borrower" was her debut novel. I look forward to reading her others.
Rebecca Makkai's third novel,"The Great Believers," is one of my favorites-moving, epic, important, impossible to put down. "The Borrower" was her debut novel. I look forward to reading her others.
I love Rebecca Makkai’s storytelling SO much. I was so absorbed in this story and will think of Ian and Lucy for such a long time. I love when a book can leave me hoping they’re out there somewhere, safe and happy.
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Makkai’s The Borrower is the foil to Nabokov’s Lolita I never knew I wanted. From the perspective of Lucy Hull, an unreliable narrator in her own right but a children’s librarian with good intentions, befriends a precocious-and-maybe-gay-10-year-old boy named Ian who spends most of his time asking Lucy for book recommendations at her library. She discovers his mother is an evangelical who may have suspicions about his sexuality, sending him to a pastor who lives to de-gay people in the name of God. Lucy’s potentially misguided instincts leads her to kidnap Ian on a 10-day road trip to protect him from his circumstances, and she intellectualizes that she is at Ian’s whim and the kidnapping was his own orchestration. She’s faced with her own quest for identity and meaning, raising ethical questions about agency and her morally ambiguous behavior and the power of people and books. Makkai’s frequent references to books (including Lolita) through Lucy’s profession as a librarian become self-referential, echoing The Borrower’s own themes and characters. It was an enjoyable, stressful read that doesn’t fully come together until the last few pages, but it was worth the wait.
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Ugh!!! I loved Ian Drake. And Ms. Hull had a few good one liners and her dad was great, but it was so ridiculous and I could not EVER understand or justify the "borrowing" especially after the ending. And so many characters were not well developed. Ian Drake saved this book for me.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I'm still trying to sort out exactly how I feel about this book, but I think I can safely say that it's amazing.
Lucy is a 26-year-old coasting through life -- her job as a children's librarian is the result of an alumni connection and her only friend is another library employee who is apparently in love with her. Her only goal in life is to not be like her father, a Russian immigrant with obvious underworld ties. She's likable and relatable, although I wanted to shake her many times, sometimes for her lack of motivation and sometimes because of her lack of restraint.
The premise of the book is that Ian, one of the library's young patrons, runs away from home and then persuades/forces Lucy to take him on a cross-country trip. Of course, there's more to the story than that. Lucy has already come under fire from Ian's fundamentalist Christian mother for giving the boy books that do not contain "the breath of God," and she's discovered that Ian is enrolled in anti-gay classes.
As Lucy's poor (albeit well-intentioned) choices snowball out of control, she learns new things about her own family and friends that make her question many of her assumptions about her life. You know from the beginning that everything won't turn out well. If common sense doesn't dictate that, the prologue gives a good clue. And yet, this book was impossible for me to put down. I had to see it to it's final, painful (although not completely hopeless) conclusion.
The story in itself is excellent and thought-provoking. What pushes this book over the top is all the literary references, from Nabokov allusions to emulations of various well-loved children's books: If You Give a Librarian a Closet, an untitled addition which could be called "The Very Hungry Librarian", etc.
Lucy is a 26-year-old coasting through life -- her job as a children's librarian is the result of an alumni connection and her only friend is another library employee who is apparently in love with her. Her only goal in life is to not be like her father, a Russian immigrant with obvious underworld ties. She's likable and relatable, although I wanted to shake her many times, sometimes for her lack of motivation and sometimes because of her lack of restraint.
The premise of the book is that Ian, one of the library's young patrons, runs away from home and then persuades/forces Lucy to take him on a cross-country trip. Of course, there's more to the story than that. Lucy has already come under fire from Ian's fundamentalist Christian mother for giving the boy books that do not contain "the breath of God," and she's discovered that Ian is enrolled in anti-gay classes.
As Lucy's poor (albeit well-intentioned) choices snowball out of control, she learns new things about her own family and friends that make her question many of her assumptions about her life. You know from the beginning that everything won't turn out well. If common sense doesn't dictate that, the prologue gives a good clue. And yet, this book was impossible for me to put down. I had to see it to it's final, painful (although not completely hopeless) conclusion.
The story in itself is excellent and thought-provoking. What pushes this book over the top is all the literary references, from Nabokov allusions to emulations of various well-loved children's books: If You Give a Librarian a Closet, an untitled addition which could be called "The Very Hungry Librarian", etc.