{"id":3757,"date":"2013-02-14T06:54:01","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T06:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=3757"},"modified":"2013-02-15T07:17:36","modified_gmt":"2013-02-15T07:17:36","slug":"the-library-of-unrequited-love-by-sophie-divry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=3757","title":{"rendered":"The Library of Unrequited Love by Sophie Divry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Translated by Sian Reynolds<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by MacLehose Press 14 February 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

92pp, hardback, \u00a310.00<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lesley Bown<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Immured in her gloomy basement, presiding over the low status geography books, racked with longing for a lover, the unnamed librarian in this extended monologue is going quietly mad.\u00a0 One morning she turns up for work carrying her usual burdens of disappointment, anger and frustration and finds that a library customer has spent the night locked in the library and is fast asleep on the floor between two book cases.<\/p>\n

Something about this prisoner sends the librarian into overdrive.\u00a0 Clearly she never has anyone to talk to (or rather, talk at) and now she has a captive, someone who can\u2019t leave until the doors are officially opened to the public.\u00a0 Her rant starts with the iniquities of the Dewey system for categorizing books, roams through French culture and the class war, and finally lands on love, or what passes for love in her distorted perspective.\u00a0 She is obsessed with a student, much younger than herself, who uses the library and who once asked her to turn on an extra light.\u00a0 Her lust is centred on the back of his neck.\u00a0 We can be absolutely sure that he isn\u2019t interested in her, has barely noticed her.<\/p>\n

Gradually we learn that she is paranoid, obsessive and incapable of forming relationships.\u00a0 Has being a librarian driven her mad or did she bring her madness to the library?\u00a0 She loves books and hates them in the same breath (another unrequited love?).\u00a0 She constantly contradicts herself and makes wilder and wilder assertions.\u00a0 Nothing else happens.\u00a0 Eventually the doors are opened, her customer is free to go, the diatribe is over.<\/p>\n

With National Libraries Day falling on 9 February this year the character raises some timely questions.\u00a0 If we use libraries, are we as she claims the \u2018captives of culture\u2019?\u00a0 Is it true that \u2018culture isn\u2019t the same thing as pleasure\u2019?\u00a0 Do books release you from a tedious life, or overwhelm you by their sheer numbers?\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t have any answers, or rather, she has a series of answers, each one different from the one before.<\/p>\n

The librarian is fascinating and beautifully drawn, but the book feels more like a character sketch for something longer than a complete work in its own right.\u00a0 Sophie Divry gives us a snapshot of a woman at one particular moment in her life, the frozen image crisply captured, the microscope turned up to full magnification.\u00a0 But still, nothing happens, there is no progression, the librarian is the same on page 1 as she is on page 92.\u00a0 (There is no page 93.\u00a0 The book is very short.)<\/p>\n

Sophie Divry\u2019s next book should be interesting.\u00a0 She has an Anita Brooknerish way with character and a subtle way of revealing the dark depths.\u00a0 However I\u2019d say she needs to think about plot.\u00a0 If a character is challenged, responds, and changes in some way, then there is a plot.\u00a0 The librarian however reveals herself, and then stops.\u00a0 I wanted more.\u00a0 And I was increasingly curious about the listener.\u00a0 Why did he (or perhaps she) stand for it?\u00a0 Why not just bolt upstairs and wait by the locked doors?\u00a0 Why stay put and tolerate the rant?\u00a0 Novelists don\u2019t have to answer all the questions they pose, but Divry doesn\u2019t answer any.\u00a0 Like the librarian in her claustrophobic basement, the reader really has nowhere to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Lesley Bown<\/p>\n

With National Libraries Day falling on 9 February this year the character raises some timely questions. If we use libraries, are we as she claims the \u2018captives of culture\u2019? Is it true that \u2018culture isn\u2019t the same thing as pleasure\u2019? Do books release you from a tedious life, or overwhelm you by their sheer numbers? She doesn\u2019t have any answers, or rather, she has a series of answers, each one different from the one before<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3757"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3763,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757\/revisions\/3763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}