The Library Book
- Jul 22, 2019
- 2 min read
★★★★☆
Ostensibly a reportage of the fire that engulfed Los Angeles’s Central Library on April 28, 1986, The Library Book is so much more. Susan Orlean weaves a rich and layered tapestry as she flits from strand to strand, from past to present, from one unforgettable character to the next, crafting a story that is part true crime, part history, part memoir. It is an ode to and celebration of books, of libraries, and of librarians. Orlean is a book lover, and this is a book lover’s book: a book for those of us who frequent their local library, who amble and linger too long in bookstores, who relish in the smell of paper and ink, who’d rather browse the collections of strangers than mingle with other party guests, who know that the books on someone’s shelf can tell you everything you need to know about him.
Still, this is a slight book, one that often feels padded, as if there wasn’t enough content down any one avenue to carry the full story. I’ve seen documentaries that clearly had to make the best of a hypothesis gone sideways, but this might be the first book I’ve read that gave me that same feeling. It’s a minor complaint, one that’s easy to make when it’s also so easy to imagine a long-form New Yorker article, where Orlean is a staff writer, that accomplishes more with less. Despite the nitpicking, there is much here for booklovers to savor. If you count yourselves one of the multitude, this quick read is well worth your time.
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