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mhall 's review for:
The Borrower
by Rebecca Makkai
A young children's librarian in a small town in Missouri has a favorite patron, an effeminate and brilliant ten-year-old boy who loves reading but whose parents are evangelical conservatives who place tight controls on what books he's allowed to read. She tries to help him as best she can, but sees him becoming more and more unhappy, and she suspects his mom might be abusing him. Then she finds out he's being sent to a program run by a pastor who claims he can "cure" homosexuality in boys.
This is where the story gets implausible. When the boy runs away and hides in the library, she... kidnaps him. They run away together on a road trip to an unknown destination. The children's librarian is a frustrating character. She knows that what she's doing is wrong and crazy. But she justifies her actions because she can't stand not being able to help him and she finds intolerable the idea of having to watch him as years pass and he gets squashed down and trampled because of his differences, and never grows into the person he deserves to become, the person whose life is changed by books and ideas:
"I believed that books might save him because I knew they had so far, and because I knew the people books had saved. They were college professors and actors and scientists and poets. They got to college and sat on dorm floors drinking coffee, amazed they'd finally found their soul mates. They always dressed a little out of season. Their names were enshrined on the pink cards in the pockets of all the forgotten hardbacks in every library basement in America. If the librarians were lazy enough or nostalgic enough or smart enough, those names would stay there forever.”
I found this book frustrating because I couldn't see how it would end in a realistic way. But I ended up liking it; recommended reading for youth services librarians especially.
This is where the story gets implausible. When the boy runs away and hides in the library, she... kidnaps him. They run away together on a road trip to an unknown destination. The children's librarian is a frustrating character. She knows that what she's doing is wrong and crazy. But she justifies her actions because she can't stand not being able to help him and she finds intolerable the idea of having to watch him as years pass and he gets squashed down and trampled because of his differences, and never grows into the person he deserves to become, the person whose life is changed by books and ideas:
"I believed that books might save him because I knew they had so far, and because I knew the people books had saved. They were college professors and actors and scientists and poets. They got to college and sat on dorm floors drinking coffee, amazed they'd finally found their soul mates. They always dressed a little out of season. Their names were enshrined on the pink cards in the pockets of all the forgotten hardbacks in every library basement in America. If the librarians were lazy enough or nostalgic enough or smart enough, those names would stay there forever.”
I found this book frustrating because I couldn't see how it would end in a realistic way. But I ended up liking it; recommended reading for youth services librarians especially.