Library Girl
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Library Girl by Polly Horvath is the first novel I have read by Horvath. I picked up the title due to the title and description. Overall, I think it was a fine story, but a bit of a disappointment and not one that I think will have a general appeal for most young readers. In fact, it may be difficult for some to get started in the story due to the writing style.
The premise of this story is Essie, an eleven-year-old girl, who has been raised in a local library where she is believed to have been abandoned by her mother. Four librarians, three of which work in the children’s department, choose to keep her existence a secret until her mother shows back up for her. Out of a longing for children of their own, they decide to raise her and so long as they never take her out of the library they are not kidnappers but only caretakers for what was left behind by someone.
Now eleven, Essie is getting freedom to explore more of the outside world outside of the library. This is how she comes across a young man by the name of G.E. who happens to also be eleven-years-old with a similar appearance. Where does he spend most of his time? In Gilmore’s the local department story. After some time thinking, Essie has uncovered what she believes to be the truth - G.E. is her twin brother, also abandoned by their mother in a department store, and the four men who he knows well must be the four dads who have raised him - much like her four mothers.
Going along with Essie’s story, G.E. helps set up the four librarians with four workers from Gilmore’s. Once all are engaged, they plan to reveal that they are long lost siblings. Well, much to Essie’s shagrin, G.E. has been playing a terrible joke and when the secret is revealed, the men have no idea what Essie is referring to and break off their engagements to the women once they learn the secret they have been keeping.
If this isn’t enough, it isn’t long before the police are called and Ms. Matterhorn, the nefarious director of the library, attempts to out the entire situation to have Essie removed from the library once and for all. Before letting everything settle, the police request a proof of parental rights at which time a huge plot twist is unveiled and Mr. Fellows, the other library director, reveals that he is in fact her father. Long story short, his wife dies, he is raising twins (G.E. is her brother) and he takes her to the library one night where he accidentally misplaces her.
Essie is reeling from the news as the story ends as she navigates her anger and hurt over the events that have transpired. The author doesn’t let the story end there, however. She wraps it up with a nice bow giving the later outcome of marriages, graduations, and funerals that span over the remaining lifetime of the characters.
That is pretty much a sufficient synopsis of the story without giving every little detail away. However, now, I will give a few more noteworthy mentions about the story.
A few things that I did not like:
The story is titled Library Girl and while Essie is the main character, a good portion of the story is dedicated to giving details about the desires, longings, and thoughts of the four mothers (aka librarians) that care for Essie. I don’t know that this aspect of the story would be all that appealing to young readers. A few such instances include their romantic relationships or the lack thereof.
Doris’s ex-husband is mentioned on page 4.
Mr. Fellows has eyes for Lucinda - mentioned a few times throughout the story. The first reference is really on page 23 when he watches Lucinda “go longingly.”
“It wasn’t only Lucinda who had the odd man falling in love with her. As Essie got older, Jeanne-Marie found herself with a series of boyfriends. So did Doris. So did Taisha” (24).
“Jeanne-Marie always had a boyfriend. She had had dozens over the years, but they never seemed to stick” (46).
On page 179 there is a mention of how children of divorced parents have to travel between homes.
Doris makes a comment on page 224 that had she known Mr. Fellows was so rich she “might have made a play for him myself.”
There are two single mothers in the story, one more involved than another and the mothers help take care of these women and their children toward the end of the book when they all move into the same home.
G.E. and Ms. Matterhorn are awful characters. G.E. plays a mean trick on Essie and the author never develops or gives a reason to allow Essie an opportunity to empathize with him. Ms. Matterhorn just hates children and is grumpy. I’m not sure what the purpose is other than to torture poor Essie and why present a librarian that is so unfavorable.
The plot twist with Mr. Fellows does add a bit of intrigue and there is enough there to attempt to develop empathy, but the idea of him working in a place where he knows his daughter is being raised unbeknownst to the women doing it - well, that is a pretty awful representation of fatherhood, and if G.E. is any indication it is clear that he is not a disciplinarian.
On page 211 Mr. Fellows tells G.E. to shut up.
On page 26 - also referenced again towards the end of the novel - is mention of how sensible and wise the four mothers were because they “didn’t ascribe to the nonsensical notion that there were any special books for any special people by race, creed, religion or age, but instead believed that anyone could and should read everything.” I don’t know if this is meant to be a remark on the call of some parents to hold public school libraries accountable for the book options available and pushed towards students, but it did not come across in a favorable way.
There is a mention on page 33 of Oscar and Essie watching people who visit The Chocolate Shop and call those who leave with vanilla ice cream cones “a loser.”
Doris is on a diet on page 45 and there is a mention of her trying to lose thirty pounds but also eating cupcakes. There is a bit of a jab on page 48 between Lucina and Doris about the cupcakes and that Lucinda “was thin as a post.”
“If her mothers asked her to show them what she had bought, they would think she was a loser when it came to the capitalist system, that was for sure” (60).
A few things I did like:
If the goal was to make readers empathetic with Essie, that was achieved.
The best character in the story is an older gentleman named Oscar who claims Essie as his granddaughter and offers her some wisdom throughout the story.
A few noteworthy quotes:
“That was why they called talent a gift. Not because it was given to you but because it was something you were able to give to others” (9).
“... but I had to explain you cannot love someone just because they want you to” (97).
“Being out in the big world had already taught her one thing: that there were scary situations to face and that this was both the excitement and joy of a big wide world and also the downside. But you couldn’t have a big world without scariness” (106).
Essie has a pretty harsh comment towards G.E. on page 222. “Just as my moms will always be my moms whether we are really related or not, he can’t be my brother just because we share birth parents. He can’t be anything to me.”
“If people were like books in the library, if everyone was their own story, then what had her mothers taught her? That all stories were good stories as long as they were true to the teller. And that you should never try to pretend that the things that had happened in the past hadn’t [...]. Because what good was s tory if it was censored and untrue?” (237).
“Trying to understand was one of the many reasons people read. Trying to understand was one of the reasons people chose a life in books” (243).
Upon visiting Polly Horvath’s website, I discovered that she is quite an accomplished writer and while life is too short to read bad books - I suggest you pass on this one - I will consider picking up something else of hers in 2025 just to give it a fair shake.
