Library Limelights 279

 

Colleen Hoover. Verity. Ebook download from TPL, 2021. USA: Grand Central Publishing / Hachette, 2018.

Sometimes one asks oneself Why did I choose this book because it’s not quite what one expected, and there’s no way its emphasis could be foreseen from a small publisher’s blurb (not the first time, this). I’ll digress on it later. The story is about writers and writing. Lowen Ashleigh is hired to complete a series of crime novels, three new ones, to continue the popular success of Verity Crawford – now rendered immobile and likely brain-dead from a car accident, requiring 24/7 nursing care at home. Both the young Crawford twins have died fairly recently in separate accidents, and father Jeremy is still grieving. Our narrator Lowen becomes a guest in their house in order to study Verity’s style, her notes, and to outline the next book. Mutual attraction grows between Lowen and Verity’s husband Jeremy that they try to ignore, until they don’t.

However, Lowen has found Verity’s hidden autobiographical manuscript and therein lies the crucial element of her personality and the crux of Hoover’s novel itself. Verity is a completely different person than what Jeremy believes. As per the manuscript, she is self-obsessed to the point of neglecting, even loathing, her children to retain Jeremy’s full attention. Sex is the weapon she wields. As Lowen reads on, the manuscript has many, many details of their sex life I’d call gratuitous porn. Author Hoover clearly meant to bolster her depiction of a shallow, amoral woman. She succeeds. Verity’s manuscript also reveals a shocking death. Torn between exposing this now-helpless woman and bailing out of the entire situation, Lowen fears her own emotions. There’s a twist, of course, and what happens is hard to swallow. The book has a long waiting list at TPL; I wonder how many will be disappointed in the end.

Lowen

▪ Some people find it difficult to separate a character from the individual who created them. (27)

▪ “I didn’t like being in her head.” (61)

▪ She has the physical and mental capabilities of a newborn. My mind is making all of this more than it is. (112)

▪ Even when his wife is virtually catatonic, he still loves her selflessly. (115)

▪ Did I unlock the door in my sleep or did I forget to lock it? I can’t even remember. (166)

▪ I want Jeremy to understand his wife in the way that I now understand her. (211)

▪ That manuscript is definitely fucking with my head. (251)

▪ The way he’s looking at me has me so terrified, I scoot away from him. (266)

Verity (her manuscript)

▪ I did anything I could to destroy the things that were going to push him away from me, but nothing worked. (106)

▪ He already loved them more than he had ever loved me. (136)

▪ We were in a corner apartment and their room didn’t butt up to any other apartment, so no one could hear them cry. (154)

▪ I was good at spewing bullshit. It’s why I became a writer. (194)

▪ So many potential accidents I could have staged. Should have staged. (217)

▪ I think my performance was so good, it made them uncomfortable to ask me more questions. (259)

Eva Jurczyk. The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. Ebook download from TPL. USA: Poisoned Pen Press, 2022.

Poor Liesl Weiss. Her boss Christopher Wolfe has had a fatal stroke and she’s suddenly the acting director of this university’s very special library department. Liesl is very competent at all the administrative tasks but the important business of fundraising and schmoozing with wealthy donors is not her style. Will things go smoothly for her? First, the director’s locked safe can’t be opened thanks to Wolfe’s careless habits—until his wife Marie arrives with the latest combination change. But the safe is empty; an extremely rare book acquisition has vanished! Next, another rare book is reported missing. Then one of their top treasures is revealed as a forgery. The Plantin Bible, the Vesalius, the Peshawar, as they are affectionately known ‒ gone, stolen. Only an inner circle of staff know of the calamity. A mousy librarian called Miriam disappears as this drama unfolds, and her name is indelibly linked with the crimes. Trying to keep all this hushed up and the library’s reputation intact is more than Liesl ever expected to deal with, although she senses general disrespect for her leadership from her academic colleagues. Arguments ensue whether to call in the police.

Insidious rivals for the permanent position of director, Francis and Max, try to cast suspicion on each other. Unlike them, Liesl is aware of new technology possibilities; colleague Rhonda becomes a wise friend. Two deaths and exposure of a thief must not be allowed to damage the university’s name but Liesl is more interested in protecting Miriam and the welfare of her husband Vivek. Which brings up the subject of mental illness that is more implied than discussed, as with Miriam and Liesl’s own husband John. Misogyny in the ranks, and racism too, are inferred rather than overt.

Needless to say, the problems are resolved, not exactly to everyone’s satisfaction. There’s no mistaking the reverence for rare books; digressions into arcane segments of the book world are a bonus. Enjoy the subtle satire of puffed-up donors—also, President Garber is almost a cartoon vegan/ environmentalist. Yet I found a disconnect in some unexplained references, along with Liesl’s often distracted dithering—you’re on your own to interpret hints, reading between the lines for unexplored content. I wonder if the novel resonates more with librarians and regular researchers than the general public. Unless you were hoping to recognize some University of Toronto gossipy secrets, lol.

~ An OFF OF writer ~

Bits

▪ “When did you see it, Francis? Had it been placed in the safe yet?” (57)

▪ “The gist I’m getting is that you’re failing to report the loss of something more valuable than our house.” (63)

▪ What was impossible was the idea that they would find the book before the donors found out they lost it. (68)

▪ The Plantin hadn’t been taken out of the office and mislaid. It had never been there in the first place. (73)

▪ “Did Garber melt into the floor when you told him?” (77)

▪ Miriam had been an odd duck since she came to them at the library nearly fifteen years ago, teenager-skinny with an early-bird-special fashion sense. (78)

▪ “I’m a mathematician,” Rhonda said, deploying that easy smile again. “I was over the hill when I didn’t have my big break by twenty-five.” (94)

▪ Liesl had broken her promise and had failed to speak with Miriam at all that day. (108)

▪ The giddiness of a good flirt got rarer with age, but it didn’t get less potent. (116)

▪ It was hard to believe that she could be made to feel so small by a grown man in a bicycle helmet. (127)

▪ “You know,” she said, “I’ve never had more authority and less control in my life.” (237)

▪ “I only called him a liar,” Francis said with a slur. “But that liar called me a thief.” (331)

Becca Babcock. One Who Has Been Here Before. Ebook download from TPL. Halifax: Vagrant Press/ Nimbus Publications, 2021.

Anthropology and sociology meet genealogy in Emma Weaver’s preparation for her Master’s thesis. Emma is studying the notorious but fictional Gaugin (not Gauguin) clan in Nova Scotia, hopefully to learn why a family that settled there over 200 years ago degenerated into a stereotype of social outcasts and criminals. Some years ago, police and social workers raided the Gaugin homes, arresting the adults and taking custody of the children. Emma was one of the children. Is that a conflict with her thesis? Her supervisors don’t think so, calling it a “historical auto-ethnography”. Eventually adopted in a caring family, Emma is nonetheless anxiety-ridden and socially awkward, typically disguising it with a smart-ass bravado attitude. After she locates the decaying old homestead in Lunenburg County, she meets various locals for research purposes.

More to the point, unexpectedly, she meets her long-lost sister Heather; she remembers Heather clearly, but recalls little of life at the rural Gaugin homestead as a four-year-old. Emma experiences mixed emotions as she hears about Heather’s foster homes and tales of other siblings. A once tight-knit clan that multiplied into numerous households, it seems many Gaugins strayed from acceptable social norms. The novel drifts into Emma’s attempts to connect with family strangers, inarticulately trying to bridge the years, realizing she had bought into the rumours and gossip surrounding the isolated poor who turn to theft and drugs. No mystery, no genealogy, and at times one says to oneself, where is this story going? Apparently based on a real family, perhaps this is an awakening to compassion.

~ An OFF OF writer ~

Bits

▪ She had covered the raid on the compound and the trials. (63)

▪ This one reporter had written about them as though they were people, real people, and a family. (64)

▪ “Backwoods family—who knows what kind of messed up shit I’m going to uncover?” (118)

▪ The excitement Emma felt about meeting another Gaugin child surprised her almost as much as Jack’s revelation had. (137)

▪ “My dad said you couldn’t stay at your house with them because your house was too filthy, and your parents and the other grownups are drunks and thieves.” (232)

▪ She had to suppress the urge to lean her arm over the back of the chair, to announce that she was a Gaugin investigating her family to find out whether she really was the product of two centuries of incest. (281-2)

▪ On top of everything else, the panic attacks were deeply, deeply humiliating. (308)

▪ If Helen was affected at all by her daughter’s appearance, she didn’t show it. (384)

▪ “But maybe you don’t write nothing about today, with us together?” (447)

▪ It wouldn’t be the story she’d set out to tell. Certainly not the one she’s been afraid of. (490)