Laura Sims’s novel, How Can I Help You?, took me right back to the handful of years when I worked at a public library in a small town. As their cat-and-mouse game escalates, Margo and Patricia take turns telling us about patrons arguing over fines, internet-averse people with inane questions, lonely people cornering them to talk their ears off, that one guy who wants to look at porn in public for reasons you never want to think too hard about, and the lady who swears that she returned a book to the book drop and that it’s the library’s fault she has fines. But, for once, the strangest person in the library isn’t one of the patrons; it’s one of the staff.
Margo Finch has worked at the Carlyle Library for two years. From the jump, we know that there is something not right about Margo because her inner monologue reveals that she had to completely reinvent herself in order to escape arrest, trial, and either a long prison sentence or death row. Margo’s not-at-all-vanished former self was a nurse who found joy in ending the lives of her patients. Her inner monologue reveals that Margo is holding onto her veneer of respectability by the skin of her teeth. Enforcing library policy is a poor substitute for holding power of life and death over people. And yet, Margo manages it until Patricia is hired as the new reference librarian.
In comparison to Margo’s chapters, Patricia’s initial chapters are a bit lackluster. Patricia is a frustrated writer with a boyfriend she doesn’t like much back in Chicago. Her high hopes for being an intellectual guide for Carlyle’s patrons quickly dissolve in the face of questions that most people would just Google. For lack of anything else to hold her attention, Patricia starts to notice that Margo is a very different person when she thinks no one is watching. When a patron Margo had been arguing with suddenly dies, Patricia catches Margo in a moment when the former nurse might have been trying to help the woman or, just as likely, have been trying to shuffle off the woman’s mortal coil.
It’s a strange moment for a relationship to start but that’s what happens. Except, you can’t call what Patricia and Margo have a friendship. Margo isn’t capable of one and Patricia seems more interested in using Margo as an unwitting muse for a new novel. Margo slips more and more when she talks to Patricia, eventually giving away enough information to make the younger woman wonder just who Margo really is. The two women’s whatever-ship devolves into a tense standoff. Margo’s facade slips further while Patricia blows off her few job duties to scribble away in her notebook. This might sound a little boring but, I promise, watching these two women freak themselves out is fascinating to watch.
I’m not sure I entirely bought the over-the-top ending. I’m not sure that Patricia had it in her to pull off what she did; I could believe anything of Margo. That said, I had such a blast with the rest of How Can I Help You? that I consider my disbelief at the climax a small quibble.