Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books
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4.2 • 23 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
‘Clever and astute … a cracking read’ The Belfast Telegraph
‘One by one, residents read the books and find their lives changed in unexpected ways’ Hello Magazine
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From the author of The Change, comes a novel about book banning and those brave enough to stand up against this censorship.
IT’S TIME TO RISE UP
In Troy, Georgia, local woman Lula Dean has campaigned to cleanse the town’s reading habits. All the ‘disgusting’, ‘pornographic’ and downright ‘un-American’ books have been removed from public spaces. Now, the townspeople are only allowed to read ‘appropriate’ books from Lula’s personal lending library.
But a small group refuse to be told what they can and cannot read and, unbeknownst to Lula, her personal collection is slowly restocked with banned books: literary classics, gay romances, Black history, spell books, and more.
One by one, each person who borrows the books from Lula’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. And as they begin to reveal their new selves, it’s clear that a showdown is fast approaching – one that will change the town of Troy forever …
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Praise for Kirsten Miller:
‘Kirsten Miller has that rare ability to take a serious subject and make it very, very funny. I enjoyed this novel and you will too’ JAMES PATTERSON
‘A story that’s as furious as it is tender’ EMILY HENRY on The Change
‘A roar of rage … I loved it’ MARIAN KEYES
‘I couldn’t put it down’ ERIN KELLY
‘Bewitching and satisfying’ THE INDEPENDENT
Reviews
Praise for Kirsten Miller and The Change:
‘A brilliant book. Thrilling, fast paced and original. I couldn’t stop reading’
Sarah Morgan
‘It gave me the same energy as Lessons in Chemistry . . . Loved it’
Harriet Tyce
‘A feminist thriller for our times’
Prima
‘Like nothing you’ve ever read before’
Red
About the author
Kirsten Miller grew up in a small town in the mountains of North Carolina. At seventeen, she hit the road and moved to New York City, where she lives to this day. Kirsten's first adult novel, The Change, is a feel-good feminist revenge fantasy and was selected by The Guardian, Prima, and Woman & Home in their ‘Books of Year’ round ups. Lula’s Little Library of Banned Books is her second adult novel, and explores book banning and those brave enough to stand up against this censorship.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This incisive comedy from Miller (The Change) finds a Georgia town transformed amid a fight over book bans. Lula Dean, a restless empty nester who's starved for attention, finds purpose by banning books she deems inappropriate for children, among them Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl and Toni Morrison's Beloved. Furthering her crusade, Lula stocks a makeshift lending library in front of her house with "appropriate" titles like The Southern Belle's Guide to Etiquette. Lindsay Underwood, a lesbian teen, takes action by sneaking banned books into the lending library under the cover of dust jackets belonging to Lula's approved books. As various townspeople read the works Lula meant to ban, they start changing their lives and the town for the better (a formerly subservient woman outs her husband for secretly collecting Nazi memorabilia; a high school football star comes to accept his gay older brother; and a group of teens rally against the town's Confederate monuments). The story climaxes with a heated race for town mayor between Lindsay's mother, Beverly, who vehemently opposes the book bans, and Lula. While some of the plot turns strain credulity, they make for a clever send-up of book banners' misplaced fears. Miller's fans will flock to her latest page-turner as social critique.
Customer Reviews
The Power of the Printed Word.
A timely, yet timeless, story of a small Southern community. Much of this book is a series of vignettes which initially seem loosely related to one another but ultimately form a cohesive narrative. The large number of characters, and relationships can be confusing - almost needing a flow-chart to keep track of all the citizens, and their children, and relations.
This social commentary has much wider implications word-wide than Southern USA, which is the setting for this book.