Public Library and Other Stories

August 29, 2016
Smith’s (How to Be Both) collection celebrates the communal impact of books through a breezy series of slice-of-life tales that highlight the casual inroads of life and literature, pairing ordinary readers with the writing that has shaped them. In “Good Voice,” a book of poems by the WWI poet Wilfred Owen is the conduit between a girl and the memory of her veteran father. “The Poet” is a microbiography of the Scottish poet Olive Fraser that notes how the minutiae of her troubled life is captured in her Keatsian stanzas. “The Human Claim” is a long meditation on the fate of D.H. Lawrence’s ashes. “Last” records a passing moment on a train between a woman and a commuter with a head full of Greek etymologies. Other stories feature a doctor’s visit informed by Milton, a reconstruction of the life of the singer Dusty Springfield, and two ex-spouses recalling their relationship through encounters with the word sepulchral. Each of these is followed by a recollection by one of Smith’s peers about their memories of public libraries, significant because this book appeared in the U.K. amid a tense battle over massive cuts to library funding. Smith’s book is certainly precious, but its earnestness and certainty that we are the sum of what we read is affecting and well-taken. This is a valiant project that depicts the everyday joy of books and makes a passionate plea for their preservation.

An engaging collection of stories that explore how people are connected by words, ideas, events, and memories and, not coincidentally, how those connections may be lost when public libraries are closed.Scottish writer Smith (How to Be Both, 2014, etc.) notes that U.K. budget cuts threaten to close as many as 1,000 public libraries. She describes her latest book as one "that celebrates the communal impact on us of books and of reading." That is clearly the case in the italicized sections between the stories, in which writers and others say what public libraries have meant to them. The thematic resonance of the stories is subtler. The opener, "Last," observes a handicapped woman accidentally trapped on a train through the eyes of a narrator whose mind wanders to the etymologies of "buxom," "stamina," "clue," and other words, to thoughts of her childhood and pressing many-leaved clovers in a book. Allusive, indirect, and only superficially conclusive, the story conveys an affection for and playfulness with language that reappears elsewhere. A disturbing photo of military executions seems to be the focal point of "Good Voice," where personal history elides into the world's through a book. The story dances from Fred Astaire to a child's nightmares, German exchange students, and the many words a reader underlined in a book of first world war poetry. One story segues from thoughts of D.H. Lawrence to a credit-card dispute and back to the writer. "The Ex-Wife," probably the best of the collection, has the narrator trying to cope with an ex-wife's love of books but then getting caught up in the writing of Katherine Mansfield and coming to appreciate both women more. Smith's casual, almost conversational style and structure don't produce conventional short stories, but there's an enticing intellect at work, and the accompanying threnody for lost libraries is sadly complementary. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 15, 2016
While Man Booker Prize finalist Smith (How to Be Both, 2014) was working on this collection of thoughtful, sensitive, imaginative, and acidly funny short stories about characters besotted by language and books, public libraries throughout the UK were being shut down. In protest, Smith asked other writers to share their thoughts about why public libraries are essential to a life fully lived, to community and democracy, and she sets clarion testimony in support of public libraries from Kate Atkinson, Helen Oyeyemi, Miriam Toews, and others, in-between her exceptionally nimble, disarming, and affecting tales. Smith's smart, discouraged loners are beset by difficult memories and grief, and driven to quiet acts of rebellion. In one wily and crackling tale, Smith juxtaposes her narrator's fascination with D. H. Lawrence against her dismay over finding fraudulent charges on her credit card. Other arresting, emotionally incisive stories portray on-the-edge characters enthralled by Katherine Mansfield and Olive Fraser, a Scottish poet published only after her death. Smith has forged a uniquely artistic and piquant paean to the liberating and sustaining power of literature and libraries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2016

Smith has been thrice short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and her recent How To Be Both won the Costa Novel Award, the Baileys Women's Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, and the Saltire Literary Book of the Year Award. Who better to write a book that offers 12 gemlike stories celebrating books--and, more significantly, that figured in a UK campaign to protest the cuts or closures threatening 500 British libraries? The stories range from a scholar chatting with her dead father about Wilfred Owen to a woman whose dreams seemingly take place in a 1960s novel; interlacing them are 12 conversations with noted authors discussing the essential role that libraries have played in their lives. The British edition has received rave reviews, and Smith is writing a special introduction for the U.S. edition.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2016

In one surreal if lucidly rendered story in this distinctive collection from Man Booker finalist Smith (How to be both), a woman whose body has sprouted roses says, "I had surprised myself by crying about, of all things, how beautiful a word can be." In fact, all the stories here are word-drunk; etymology is ever at stake, and one story mourns the loss of British Isles dialects since World War I even as it shows how the poetry of that era captures its "gone voices." Sharing and preserving such voices are central themes here. As Smith's introduction explains, "This happens to be a book that celebrates the communal impact on us of books and of reading," and upon its publication it became part of the campaign to defend UK public libraries from politically motivated service cuts. Included are reflections on the library's importance from ordinary readers and major authors like Kate Atkinson. VERDICT Original and always surprising. [See Prepub Alert, 4/25/16.]

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2016

In one surreal if lucidly rendered story in this distinctive collection from Man Booker finalist Smith (How to be both), a woman whose body has sprouted roses says, "I had surprised myself by crying about, of all things, how beautiful a word can be." In fact, all the stories here are word-drunk; etymology is ever at stake, and one story mourns the loss of British Isles dialects since World War I even as it shows how the poetry of that era captures its "gone voices." Sharing and preserving such voices are central themes here. As Smith's introduction explains, "This happens to be a book that celebrates the communal impact on us of books and of reading," and upon its publication it became part of the campaign to defend UK public libraries from politically motivated service cuts. Included are reflections on the library's importance from ordinary readers and major authors like Kate Atkinson. VERDICT Original and always surprising. [See Prepub Alert, 4/25/16.]

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.