Alix Watson has always been able to escape into books when life gets rough. When her mother left, when she looses a job, even when she has her identity stolen, Alix knows that she can leave the world behind for a while to roam Narnia or fly with dragons. On a particularly bad day, Alix discovers a magical library behind a door at the Boston Public Library. Kate Quinn’s The Astral Library is a book for people who look to books and libraries for refuge.
It’s probably the worst day in her life when Alix pushes through a door and finds herself in the Astral Library. This library—guarded by a brusque, old-school librarian—contains every book ever written or will ever be written. Readers who never finished their to-be-read lists peacefully haunt the library; one of them is determined not to move on until he’s finished War and Peace. Time never moves in the Astral Library and there’s always tea and biscuits available from fiction’s finest kitchens. Visitors to the library (the living ones) can either cozy up to a book while things blow over or, for those who need a more permanent sanctuary can choose to live inside of their favorite public domain1 stories.
Just as Alix is about to step into one of her most beloved stories, a red note flies into the library with a warning that one of the bookish escapees is in danger of being discovered. Being the kind of nosy person she is, Alix refuses to let the Librarian go alone to help the woman hiding inside The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It’s a good thing she did because within hours, more notes arrive with dire news for many more story-loving refugees. At the same time, increasingly dire messages come from the Library Board, peppered with ominous phrases about costs, value, and return-on-investment. The Astral Library races through some of my favorite novels—Sherlock Holmes, of course, Jane Austen, Mark Twain—as Alix and the Librarian try to figure out what the hell is going on.
This novel makes no bones about its love for libraries, reading, and books. Libraries can endure book banners and people who insist that everything has to make money2 as long as there are people who are ready to stand up and fiercely defend them. I cheered Alix and the Librarian as they took on all comers attacking the Astral Library. This book is a rousing call to action to all of us readers to step into the breach and defend our public, school, and universities libraries from those who don’t understand the value of self-education or the joy of finding a book that feels like it was written for you. Libraries need us more than ever these days.
- Copyright is everywhere. ↩︎
- Libraries do have a good return-on-investment. According to Every Library, every $1.00 US spent on libraries has a return of about $5.00 US. ↩︎
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.