The Librarian: The Top 10 Sunday Times Bestseller - Softcover

Vickers, Salley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241330238 ISBN 13: 9780241330234

Publisher: Penguin, 2018

Synopsis

The Librarian by Salley Vickers (Paperback)

Sylvia Blackwell, a young woman in her twenties, moves to East Mole, a quaint market town in middle England, to start a new job as a children's librarian. But the apparently pleasant town is not all it seems.

Sylvia falls in love with an older man, but it is her connection to his precocious young daughter and her neighbours' son which will change her life, putting them, her job and the library itself under threat.

How does the library alter the young children's lives and how do the children fare as a result of the books Sylvia introduces them to?

A work of fiction that also reflects Salley Vicker’s own lifelong love of literature, The Librarian brims with references to favourite novels from childhood onwards (readers will appreciate the accompanying list of all the fiction mentioned in the book).

Carrying echoes of Penelope Fitzgerland’s The Bookshop and Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, it’s a book about love, education and the relationship between an individual and a community. Most of all, however, it is a book about the ways in which reading can shape and foster a life.

More Details:

• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• ISBN: 9780241330234
• Number of pages: 400
• Weight: 277 g
• Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 24 mm

About this title

Product Description:

*A Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller*

'Vickers sees with a clear eye and writes with a light hand; she's a presence worth cherishing in the ranks of modern novelists.' Philip Pullman

In 1958, Sylvia Blackwell, fresh from one of the new post-war Library Schools, takes up a job as children's librarian in a run down library in the market town of East Mole.

Her mission is to fire the enthusiasm of the children of East Mole for reading. But her love affair with the local married GP, and her befriending of his precious daughter, her neighbour's son and her landlady's neglected grandchild, ignite the prejudices of the town, threatening her job and the very existence of the library with dramatic consequences for them all.

The Librarian is a moving testament to the joy of reading and the power of books to change and inspire us all.

'Underneath the delightful patina of nostalgia for post-War England, there are stern and spiky questions about why we are allowing our children to be robbed of their heritage of story.' Frank Cottrell Boyce

'Vickers has a formidable knack for laying open the human heart' Sunday Times

Review:

A nostalgic treat...involving and hopeful (Mail on Sunday)

Excellent... a period tale of sentimental education, it's deliciously readable, with a clever epilogue zooming into the present day for a last gasp surprise (Daily Mail)

No one can dig down into the shrouded recesses of the human heart quite as forensically as Vickers (Sunday Times)

Vickers writes of relationships with undaunted clarity (Adam Phillips)

Quirky and charming (Love It!)

This beautifully crafted novel is a tribute to the power of books (S Magazine, Sunday Express)

The Librarian will wring the heart of anyone who fell in love with books as a child. It is a hymn to the power of children's literature...delightful (The Times)

Vickers lays bare the inner workings of one family, possibly every family, with an often disconcerting clarity (The Times on 'Cousins')

Vickers' real skill as a story teller is in allowing each distinct voice to contribute to a complete, or as complete as can be, picture of one family... the pace gathers, making for a deeply poignant climax (Financial Times on 'Cousins')

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0241330238
• ISBN 13: 9780241330234
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400