I need to define a new literary genre, so if anyone has the postal address of the executive in charge of such matters, I'd be grateful if they would share this information; (I'm quite sure this is too sombre a procedure to be conducted by e-mail). The genre in question is - and, yes, I fully realise it is in need of somewhat snappier nomenclature - 'Quite Short Books About Libraries'.
I've already mentioned in these blog pages, albeit in passing, the excellent The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, in which Her Majesty is stirred to bibliophilia by the accidental discovery of a mobile library van in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. To swell the genre by 100%, I've just finished reading The Library of Unrequited Love, by Sophie Divry, which comprises a monologue by a disaffected, hopelessly lovelorn female French librarian (in France), delivered to a library user who has (apparently) been locked into the library overnight. This is a charming and piquant amouse-bouche, 'though not without a pleasing insight into and compassion for the human spirit when it is shackled by the routine frustrations of work and love. The narrator offers us various descriptions, eulogies and diatribes - some of which directly contradict others - concerning, among other subjects: the Dewey Decimal system; the internal politics of provincial French libraries and the major figures in French military and political history. The Librarian's mixture of irascibility and erudition is beautifully captured (by the translator and, I assume, the author before that) and - when she turns to the titular theme (represented by an attractive young male student) - comically poignant.
Running through the Librarian's delivery is a passionate love for books and libraries, often comically couched in her own very Gallic brand of hyperbole and metaphor...
The reader is a virgin. . . And I like to see people losing their library virginity. . If the librarian comes charging at you like a bull, no kindness, no foreplay, that's it. You'll never come back. Divorced from culture. Lifelong abstinence. and one could certainly find worse rallying-calls for the defence of libraries, as places of cultural and social necessity, than this little book and its quirky protagonist.
This first novel is a surprising, unusual and satisfying read, like many I've collected from, and returned to my local library (the quite splendid Hitchin public lending emporium), whose staff I may never see in quite the same light again. In the meantime, your suggestions for additions to this genre of two would be most welcome.
Recommended for: Librarians; Francophiles; people with very limited leisure time and dislikers of crowd scenes.
One of the many advantages conferred upon readers by library membership is that frisson which is added to the literary experience by having to read a book before a certain time. In most cases this is a frisson of minimal proportions, as one is able to renew one's lendings, with laughable ease, via the twinkling magic of the internet. This marvellous facility is offered, I am sure, by most library services today, and is certainly available in Hertfordshire, to pick at random the county in which I live. In rare instances, however, one's book will have been reserved by another library user, and the race between reading time and the return deadline is very much on.
This is one of the reasons why I'm reading Seraphina as quickly as possible; the other being that it is the best Science Fantasy book I have read in a good long while (since the Passing of The Second Age and the Fall, (or was it Awkward Stumble) of Folizar The Lilac, in fact). Seraphina, recently published in paperback as a Young Adult novel (but equally suitable for the Wizened and all other varieties of Adult), is a book about dragons. I have flown over many lands and through countless ages with these beasts, from Tolkien's Smaug (which we now know is Elvish for Benedict Cumberbatch), via the doughty dragon-riders of Pern to the sublime mysticism of Earthsea. They are, in short, an SF staple, and highly dangerous in the wrong hands for that very reason. Rachel Hartman handles this trope with such assurance and skill that it is difficult to believe this is her first fantasy novel.
The book is narrated by the titular young woman who is the product of an illegal and unusual inter-species relationship (although the female dragon was in the human form which these creatures can assume) and Hartman uses Seraphina's perspective to draw a world in which the two species are about to celebrate the anniversary of an uneasy truce, and in which suspicion, hostility and prejudice vie with the desire for peace, reconciliation and tolerance. Hartman's attention to detail, sense of humour, deft characterisation and sheer writing ability all combine to make this scenario not only credible but utterly absorbing and moving, with the allegorical and moral overtones never being overplayed. One of the enriching threads is the role and significance of emotion and music to both cultures, with the dragons possessing a Vulcanesque aversion to the former and providing many of the book's excellent comic moments in doing so. When a priest stomps angrily away from Seraphina's father, her uncle (also a dragon in human form) asks:
'Did he leave because you convinced him his religion is a sham? Or was he ......what's that one called? Offended?'
Religion is another very well-played card, with the human belief system - based around a pantheon of colourfully-named saints - described well at both the higher and populist levels. It was, in fact, a very early baptism scene in the book featuring a psalter in which a heretical saint had not been concealed, which made me feel I was going to enter a world of rich imagination and excellent writing. Mind you, any novel which starts as well as this one:
'I remember being born.
In fact, I remember a time before that. There was no light, but there was music: joints creaking, blood rushing, the heart's staccato lullaby, a rich symphony of indigestion.'
has already gone a long way to engaging my attention. Not only does the imagery prefigure the profound importance of music in the book, but the deliberate bathos of 'indigestion' reveals a writer who makes most authors in this genre sound like they're using writing by numbers kits.
This book is so good that I may (especially if I haven't finished it before the Library Bell tolleth) even confer upon it the ultimate honour of buying a copy. Mercifully, the paperback cover, unlike the hardback, does not suggest that a fantasy novel has had a nasty collision with Mills and Boon.
