As the voracious reader I am, there are certain groups of
books I cannot pass up. Novels about
books, libraries, and bookstores are one of the most important of these
groups. Sue Halpern has been widely
praised for her journalism and criticism.
Sue has appeared in an impressive range of publications from Condé Nast Traveler to The New Yorker. She is also a scholar in residence at
Milddlebury College, and she was a Rhodes Scholar and a Guggenheim Fellow. Her latest effort is a novel, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library,
which I found most entertaining.
Solstice, known as “Sunny,” is a teenager who tries to steal
a 532-page dictionary by slipping it between her belly and her jeans. She is caught, arrested, and finds herself
before a judge, who is reluctant to send a teen to jail for petty theft. Sue writes, “Solstice Arkinsky, for the crime
of stealing the Merriam Webster’s
Collegiate Dictionary, I hereby sentence you to forty hours a week of
community service at the Riverton Public Library, to be carried out every day
during summer vacation until the new school year begins” (27). One minor detail is revealed when she says, “I
don’t go to school” (28). Sunny is
home-schooled by her hippie parents. At
first, Sunny is sullen and resentful.
She is assigned by the director of the library to serve her time under
the watchful eye of a librarian, Kit.
The story carries two distinct plot lines. In addition to Sunny’s narrative, Kit tells
her story in sections labeled “The Marriage Story.” The story of these two characters is quite
interesting. One of the better aspects
of Kit’s story are her occasional visits to her therapist. Halpern writes, “‘I’m a misanthrope,’ she
told Dr. Bondi. ‘Being alone suits me’
// He was skeptical. ‘Maybe,’ he
said. ‘Maybe now, but I don’t think it’s
in your nature.’ / Kit laughed. ‘If it’s
nature versus nurture, in this case nurture wins.’ ‘Like I said, I don’t think it’s a permanent
feature.’ // But it was. That’s what I
had become. And Kit had come to think of
herself as a loner, at home in her solitude, like one of those self-reliant
spinster women from literature. By the
end of the workday she craved nothing more than to hear the creak of the
floorboards underfoot and the hum of the refrigerator that suffused the
house. By the end of the week, she was
content to putter, to speak only the occasional greeting to passersby if she
happened to be on the porch, to ask little of others and be asked little in
return” (115). Sunny and Kit become
close friends. Kit invites Sunny to stay
overnight on occasions when her parents were out of town.
Before her divorce, Kit was a teacher, “It was books I was
drawn to—the smell of them, the feel of them, the way they invaded and captured
me—not talking about books. I enrolled
in library school and got a part-time job at a used book store, taking orders
over the phone” (195).
A trifecta! What
could be better-- English teachers, books, and libraries! Anyone interested in these three pillars of
knowledge will surely find Sue Halpern’s novel, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library a delightful read! 5 Stars
--Chiron, 5/3/18
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