Public library and other stories
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A richly inventive collection of stories about our enduring love of books from the Booker Prize-shortlisted, Women's Prize-winning author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet
'Smith is dazzling in her daring. Sheer inventive power' Observer
Why are books so powerful?
What do the books we read make of us?
And what does the vanishing of public libraries say about us?
These stories are about what we do with books and what they do with us: how they travel with us; how they shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser and ageless all at once; how they remind us to pay attention to the world we make.
Public libraries are places of joy, freedom, community and discovery - and they are under threat from funding cuts and widespread closures across the UK and further afield. With this brilliantly inventive collection, Ali Smith raises her voice in defence of our public libraries, celebrating their essential place in our culture and history.
*****
'Ali Smith is a one-off. Her imagination and originality make her one of the most exciting novelists of her generation' Daily Express
'In Ali Smith we have a writer whose dazzling sophistication will surely be celebrated, studied and argues over hundreds of years after we're gone' Scotsman
'Smith's world is incredibly generous - it's a place where all sorts of stories and human connections are possible' Metro
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Smith's (How to Be Both) collection celebrates the communal impact of books through a breezy series of slice-of-life tales that highlight the casual inroads of life and literature, pairing ordinary readers with the writing that has shaped them. In "Good Voice," a book of poems by the WWI poet Wilfred Owen is the conduit between a girl and the memory of her veteran father. "The Poet" is a microbiography of the Scottish poet Olive Fraser that notes how the minutiae of her troubled life is captured in her Keatsian stanzas. "The Human Claim" is a long meditation on the fate of D.H. Lawrence's ashes. "Last" records a passing moment on a train between a woman and a commuter with a head full of Greek etymologies. Other stories feature a doctor's visit informed by Milton, a reconstruction of the life of the singer Dusty Springfield, and two ex-spouses recalling their relationship through encounters with the word sepulchral. Each of these is followed by a recollection by one of Smith's peers about their memories of public libraries, significant because this book appeared in the U.K. amid a tense battle over massive cuts to library funding. Smith's book is certainly precious, but its earnestness and certainty that we are the sum of what we read is affecting and well-taken. This is a valiant project that depicts the everyday joy of books and makes a passionate plea for their preservation.
