Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

March 5, 2018
Halpern’s clever and touching latest (following A Dog Walks into a Nursing Home) unites a disparate cast of characters who have come to the town library for a variety of reasons. Kit is a reference librarian at the library in Riverton, N.H., a once-booming mill town that has declined since the mills closed. Though residents moved away and shops were shuttered, the library has remained open, and Kit has taken refuge there to escape her irreparably fractured marriage. Kit is mostly a loner who takes solace in books, but she opens up to Sunny, a teen sentenced to community service at the library for stealing a dictionary. Sunny, a bright, inquisitive young woman, makes friends with the regular library patrons and manages to put some cracks in Kit’s carefully erected shell as they spend more time together. Sunny also befriends library patron Rusty, an unemployed former employee of a New York investment firm who has come to town to visit the bank where his mother had a secret savings account. Rusty’s story line gives the novel a light mystery element, but the characters are the highlight here: their relationships are illuminating and evolve throughout, resulting in a crowd-pleasing tale of friendship.

Three narrators blend seamlessly to present a story that switches time, locale, and voice frequently. After stealing a book, young Sunny Arkinsky, portrayed by Dara Rosenberg, is "sentenced" to work in the Robbers Library. Sunny's disposition enlivens the small, struggling library and the life of librarian Kit Sweeney, portrayed by Allyson Ryan. Most appealing are meeting the library's regulars and hearing insider gossip. Ryan's and Rosenberg's performances are deftly enhanced by third narrator Josh Bloomberg's winning storytelling. Diverse characters and personalities--many eccentric--add to the listening experience. The story centers on Ryan's prickly Sweeney, who is beaten down by life and content in her isolation. Chatty Sunny and her uninhibited views make her the consummate change agent. This genial audiobook is also a love story about libraries, readers, and books. S.G.B. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

January 1, 2018

Back when Andrew Carnegie was building public libraries in every city across America, the town of Riverton, NH, had its own mogul, whose name was Robers, which morphed into "Robbers" through probably equal parts humor and resentment. The town barely hangs on, but the library is now its best-maintained building. Halpern (Dog Walks into a Nursing Home) brings together three oddball characters in this setting and follows them through their encounters with multiple points of view. There is librarian Kit, fresh from therapy following marriage to a controlling monster, Solstice (Sunny), a teenager whose parents live off the grid and hide a secret past, and Rusty, a fugitive from Wall Street. When Sunny is assigned community service at the library after being arrested for shoplifting, she soon connects with Kit and Rusty. VERDICT Fans of Felicity Hayes-McCoy's The Library at the Edge of the World will be taken with this beautifully written novel with appealing characters. Given that the author's plot line stretches typical library policy a bit, it's bound to stir some lively book-club discussions about public libraries and their operations.--Mary K. Bird-Guilliams, Chicago

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2017
In the faded industrial town of Riverton, New Hampshire, the local library becomes a beacon for lost souls.Journalist-author Halpern (A Dog Walks into a Nursing Home, 2013, etc.) has written a sweet if mild novel with genuine charm. Prominent among the lost souls is the librarian, Kit, 44, a sardonic, highly secretive woman trying to recover from a bad marriage. Fifteen-year-old Sunny is working at the library over the summer--court-ordered penance for stealing a dictionary--and trying to figure out her oddball parents, latter-day hippies with a secret of their own. Then there's Rusty, 39, a one-time Wall Street high roller, down on his luck but with an improbable scheme to collect money from an old Riverton bank account that belonged to his mother. Joining in are The Four, lovable old-timers who "treated the [library] like a clubhouse." The book meanders amiably, filling in the back stories of the central characters, until about the last third, when the narrative kicks into high gear with a death and a fire that lead to various resolutions. If the book were a TV show, you'd call it a dramedy. It's about recovering from loss and building a family with people to whom you're not necessarily related. There are a number of affecting moments, but there are also missteps: the big reveal--i.e., what happened with Kit's husband--is complicated and verges on over-the-top. The last part suffers from too many teachable moments, mostly involving Kit's overly wise shrink, Dr. Bondi. And the switching back and forth between narrators is distracting.Still, the novel is suffused with a love of books and reading--each section starts with a line of poetry from a noted poet--and in the end, the library's endearing denizens prove to be very good company.

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Starred review from November 15, 2017
Halpern (A Dog Walks into a Nursing Home, 2013), a master of precise, warmhearted creative nonfiction and a discerning and sensitive novelist, infuses this tale of derailments and second chances with free-ranging empathy, lithe humor, and penetrating insights into the human psyche. Riverton, New Hampshire, is a financially depleted, increasingly dingy small town grateful for its anchoring library, one of 1,687 constructed by Andrew Carnegie. Folks call it the Robbers Library not only because Carnegie was one of the so-called robber barons who sought redemption through enlightened philanthropy, but also because the man who built the mills that once sustained the town and who also contributed to the library was named Albert Robers, which just begs for that extra b. Speaking of robbery, Sunny, 15, whose birth name is Solstice, and who is being haphazardly raised and no-schooled by secretive, determinedly off-the-grid, Rainbow Gathering parents, is caught attempting to steal a big, fancy dictionary. Intrigued by her unusual crime, the judge comes up with the perfect punishment: Sunny is sentenced to a full summer of community service at the Robbers Library. The library director briskly hands Sunny over to the reference librarian, Kit, who is fairly new in town and hardly thrilled about this disruptive responsibility. Profoundly and purposefully solitary, Kit carefully conceals her traumatic past, which Halpern slowly and strategically reveals in captivating flashbacks. Kit and Sunny warily size each other up as they work together, and Kit's hard shell soon begins to soften in the glow of Sunny's energy, curiosity, and pleasure in being surrounded not only by books but also by people. Hers, we learn, has been a strange and isolating life. Headquarters for the Four, a quartet of friendly, funny, bright, and observant older men, the pillars of the town, the library also becomes the base of operations for a mysterious, good-looking, seemingly prosperous man who spends all day on the computer. Halpern discloses his past, too: Rusty was a mega-rich Wall Street power player who lost it all except for his Mercedes, his stylish clothes, and his mother's old bank book, which led him to Riverton, where he's anxiously researching the town's history. In each story line, Halpern subtly tests our assumptions about self, love, marriage, family, vocation, and ethics, both personal and communal. Along the way, she offers a realistic view of the struggles and triumphs of a small public library, while framing it as a safe place in which to search for answers and solace. Halpern's unsentimental portrayal of the library as both refuge and a place of illumination and inspiration harmonizes well with that of Rebecca Makkai in The Borrower (2011), John Irving in In One Person (2012), and Howard Norman in My Darling Detective (2017). The adversity-defined perspectives and piquant senses of humor possessed by Halpern's irresistible characters shape this inclusively appealing novel's searingly candid yet ultimately benevolent worldview. Finely choreographed and lucidly told, Halpern's uplifting tale peers into suffering both random and inflicted with malice, then works its way with wisdom and charm to an unfazed celebration of supportive communitiesepicenters of kindness and teasing, skepticism and respect, nosiness and generosity, backed by a low-key affirmation of just how essential public librariesoases, bedrocks, incubators, launching padsare to our lives, our democracy, and our future.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)