December 5, 2021 · 6:41 pm

The Last Chance Library: Snuggly and soothing and aren’t libraries the best

There is nothing but cozy feelings in Freya Sampson’s The Last Chance Library. It borders on the saccharine and pat (in the way of A Man Called Ove or The Hundred Year Old Man) but perhaps because its is also an ode to the library as essential public institution, or perhaps because the world is terrible and we all need the occasional reprieve, I enjoyed it.

The book opens with June, 27 years old and working as a library assistant in the tiny town of something that starts with a C. If you were drawing the plot arc of this book, alongside the character development it would go something like this: (1) June is timid/still lives in childhood home/can’t connect with others because of her grief (2) library is threatened with closure/June encounters man from childhood who also loves books and is incredibly kind/June is timid and now aware of how her grief and timidity are preventing her from living her life (3) a series of escalating moments of decision force June to take tiny steps to connect with others and to be brave and a series of obvious but nevertheless endearing obstacles get in the way of June dating the man (4) climax where we see June and the library get what we hope (5) very tidy ending.

The whole time you know exactly that everything is going to work out, and that all of the little challenges – will they get enough people to the protest? – are manageable and quaint and so even if somehow things go wrong… nothing will explode. Identity, politics, the fate of the world, none of them are implicated here. Just… will the library be saved, will June move on in her life, and the whole time we all know: yes, just the question of how.

I shouldn’t say politics aren’t involved at all. The library is threatened because of government spending cuts, and part of the argument the townspeople mount is how the library is the one remaining space where people of all ages and backgrounds can come for a safe place to be, to connect with one another and to receive service and care. And to use the washroom and get out of the heat or cold. I appreciated the way the book tried to figure out what it was that makes libraries so special – is it the place, or the people, or the librarians, or the programs, or the books, or the history – but ultimately allows that it has to be all of those things, and that we will each have special resonance with the library.

I do love the library. And if nothing else this book reminded me not to take it for granted. But mostly, it reminded me – as I’ve always known and still forget – that beyond baking shows, I can also be soothed by a completely gentle and utterly enjoyable book.

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November 24, 2021 · 3:41 am

Crossroads: Dear, God

You’re thinking, Erin, you haven’t read much in October. And you’re wrong! I read Empire of Pain at a neat 550 and then chased it with Jonathan Franzen’s newest, Crossroads, at 600, and so find myself owing the library A LOT in late fines because I – ridiculously, ambitiously, foolishly – persisted in keeping four other novels waiting on my nightstand that were CLEARLY NOT GOING TO BE READ in their two week loan window, but what, dear reader, do I have to offer the world if not my unrealistic and ill-founded font of never ending hope? (It’s true, I can also offer pie).

And was Franzen’s book ‘worth’ the investment of three weeks and $9.00 in late fines? I don’t know, maybe? Probably? I mean, if it was just straight up library free, then sure. But should you pay for it? Which isn’t that the same as saying should it exist at all because what are books if not to be marketed and BOY DO I DIGRESS tonight.

Right right. So it’s a big, fat American family novel in keeping with Freedom, Purity and The Corrections. This one follows each of the members of the Hildebrandt family (with the notable exception of the youngest, Judson, who is – I gather – too innocent/good/pure to warrant his own narrative voice yet) as they abandon/give up/stray from/wander/fall apart [pick your verb] the good/straight/normal/predictable [pick your adjective] path/journey/role/life [and noun] and instead demonstrate the thousands of ways everyone is failing to live up to any kind of normalized ideal and is instead holding it together on appearance and self proclamation.

The God part of the book was tricky for me as a reader. Dedicated atheist etc, I approach novels assuming the same and what Crossroads pitches isn’t that there is a God necessarily, or that God is the answer, but instead explores how religion functions for individuals and communities in America, and how belief – in this case in God – functions as some kind of anchor, even while the ‘institution’ surrounding that belief is corrupt and decaying.

Set in the 1970s the simplicity in plot where catastrophes can take place because cellphones don’t exist was also charming. And where the yearning for something steady or someone to whom an answer could be demanded is equally resonant.

So yeah. The writing has some really great moments, the characters (particularly Perry) are terrific, and on the whole it’s reasonably interesting. But no, I wouldn’t give up your holidays to read it. Instead, pick a bleak month like early November and have at it.

And sure, ask me why I keep reading Jonathan Franzen novels when every time I end up being like “shrug.” I DON’T KNOW. Dupe for the marketing? Probably. No straight answers tonight, folks.

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November 24, 2021 · 3:19 am

Empire of Pain: It Won’t Feel Good (and not just because it is literally very heavy) But A Must Read

I did commit to reading more nonfiction this year, and so in the waning months of 2021 I thought, why not read something cheerful, like a 560 page deep dive into the Sackler family and their obscene greed that brought the world mass marketed pharmaceuticals and Oxycontin and the subsequent hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths?

I didn’t realize when ordering it from the library that it was from the same author, Patrick Radden Keefe, as my previous 2021 nonfiction win, Say Nothing. But happy discovery, as like Say Nothing the writing is ‘novelistic’ in that people (cough characters) are afforded full depth and complicated motivations and that there is a plot that one can latch onto. So no dry, dull non-fiction for this reader. (Sure, sure, I get it, 2021’s experiment has proven that non-fiction is… pretty great. Don’t rub it in, NHFH.)

What this one offers is on the surface a biography of the Sackler family, beginning with the three brothers that found Purdue pharmaceuticals, but chiefly Arthur, who is something of an impossible figure to believe in the range of interests, the maniacal pursuit of them and the ‘success’ he brought in merging the fields of advertising, medicine and drug development. We then follow the subsequent generations of Sacklers and their truly relentless and amoral pursuit of profit over the clear and consistent and unequivocal proof the dangers of their opioid products. The level of corruption within the government and government agencies, of doctors and pharmacies, the collusion and feigned ignorance, it’s all… a lot, and yet, somehow not at all surprising.

The book explores with some complexity the complicity of later generations and what level of involvement within the Sackler business should ‘taint’ a Sackler family member. Or whether benefiting – directly or indirectly – from Sackler profits besmirches the character or actions of an individual family member, some of whom (though not many) were tangential to the direct business dealings.

I especially appreciated the section detailing the work of activist artist, Nan Goldin, and the demonstration of the power of art to unsettle and unseat power. A meta commentary, I’m sure, on the potential of the book to provoke change, of books to make a difference.

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October 9, 2021 · 1:57 am

Shuggie Bain: Not a cheerful read, and other true things.

Douglas Stuart’s 2020 Booker Prize Winner, Shuggie Bain, is the sort of fat novel you crawl inside. It’s not particularly plot-y, but it is an entirely realized world of a falling apart family and a boy realizing himself. It opens with fifteen year old Shuggie on his own in a dire rooming house, before flashing back to his years as a young child growing up with his alcoholic mum, Agnes, and his serially cheating dad, Shug. Plus his half-siblings who are busy protecting themselves and his grandparents who blame themselves for Agnes’ behaviour, but aren’t equipped to recognize what needs to be done to protect Shuggie. We leap around in time following Shuggie – and Agnes – as the gay son navigates a world with parents who do little, but are somehow still sympathetic.

With that, the novel unfolds around Shuggie and what we can reasonably hope for his life given what surrounds him. And maybe that’s what makes it such a claustrophobic novel. The sort where you where you know from the opening pages that nothing good will happen. Thatcher’s Glasgow sort of nothing good will happen.

But the writing. It’s such beautiful writing.

So maybe if you’re ready – 2020 was probably not the right time to read it – you could give it a read.

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