The Book Borrower

Toby Ruben and Deborah Laidlaw begin a friendship that forms the substance of their lives. On the first day they meet, Deborah lends Toby a book, TROLLEY GIRL, Miriam Lipkin's memoir recounting the tragic results of an anarchist uprising in Brooklyn in the 1920s. This story-within-a-story circles Deborah's and Toby's lives for 22 years. Suzanne Toren is simply superb. Her characters are full-blooded, three-dimensional human beings. As Toby, her voice tightens with an angry, competitive edginess. As Deborah, it welcomes and envelops in a motherly embrace. Alice Mattison seamlessly fuses past with present while revealing the contradictions--the jealousies, loyalties, and betrayals--always present in love, sisterhood, and friendship. Toren's intelligence shines in her reading, and her star-quality voice offers yet another stellar performance. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

October 4, 1999
The pleasures, intimacies, tensions and failures of female friendship frame this subtle, psychologically rich novel, which chronicles the volatile relationship between two women and highlights issues of loyalty, sacrifice and guilt. In brisk, energetic prose, Mattison (Hilda and Pearl) investigates the prickly territory between affection and unconscious jealousy, avowals of devotion and secret betrayals, commitment and selfishness. On the day in 1975 when they meet in a Boynton, Mass., playground with their respective young children, Deborah Laidlaw loans Toby Ruben Trolley Girl, a book about a tragic trolley-car accident that occurred in the town in 1920. Ample, embracing, generous Deborah is a Catholic earth mother. Ruben (she thinks of herself only by her surname) is a harder person, Brooklyn-born, rough-edged, subconsciously resentful, Jewish. Despite their apparent incompatibility and Ruben's competitive streak, the two women sustain a deep attachment over two decades, interrupted twice when Ruben causes Deborah grief (and her job) by denigrating her teaching ability (a profession they both share). But an essential affinity always draws them back together, and they debate existential questions in a quirky sort of verbal shorthand, until the day when Deborah declares to Ruben: "You have a kindness defect,'' and admits she's frightened of Ruben's harsh assessment of herself and others. Suddenly, Deborah's death in an auto accident and the reappearance of the book Ruben borrowed long ago (passages from which have been interspersed in the narrative) connect. Trolley Girl's protagonist--an unrepentant anarchist who caused the deadly accident when she was young--turns out to be an elderly sculptor already entwined in Ruben's life. Through her, Ruben achieves insights into the insidious ways unconscious anger can undermine relationships. Mattison constructs her layered plot with the skill of a gem-setter, showing small facets of Ruben's growing understanding of her own failings as a friend and human being, and as she finally understands Deborah's legacy of tolerance and hope. Agent, Zoe Pagnamenta, Wylie.