Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
|
Loading... The Borrower: A Novel (edition 2012)by Rebecca Makkai
Work InformationThe Borrower by Rebecca Makkai
   Books Read in 2014 (1,244) Books Read in 2013 (789) » 2 more Books Read in 2016 (48) Top Five Books of 2013 (1,558)
 libreriarofer | Dec 21, 2023 |   The writing style suffers from an abundance of the narrator's meandering thoughts and conjectures. Like most people the narrator (Lucy) has numerous false starts before she says (or doesn't say) something, but here we are given free access to these stumbles; way too much information. Furthermore, Lucy spins out endless scenarios of what other characters may be doing, which bogs down the flow because the author never does anything with these thoughts, just lets them pile up. A character's conjecturing is like highlights in your hair - best when used sparingly and with careful placement, otherwise it's a hot mess. And speaking of meandering conjectures, Lucy does a lot - A LOT - of this about herself. And here it would generally work because she is on the run, and imaging the outcomes of various actions is logical. So Lucy's inaction brings us to the heart of the too little portion. Lucy AT NO POINT asks Ian why he is running away! They are together a week, most of that time alone in a car, and she never asks him! She assumes she knows why, but even so a real person would still ask a child for an explanation, would try to talk about it again and again until there was some clarity. It makes no sense at all, and when I realized that she was never going to ask him about his reasons, well, for me the book shattered. There were some bright spots in the book, to be sure. First, I really liked the idea that a kid can force an adult into uncomfortable/dangerous/illegal actions and situations by threatening to lie about the adult to authorities. Kids actually have a lot of power over adults, and this explored that dynamic in an interesting way. Second, I liked the literary allusions and poems the author sprinkles throughout; they were fun and made me smile. Third, I liked that the author took on the damaging (and illegal) practice of " reprogramming" gay and lesbian people to become heterosexual. She does a pretty good job of creating a fun, interesting, smart, happy child whose parents are trying to break him to fit into a specific mold that matches their religion, and to show what can be lost if they succeed. I LOVE that she specifically talks about how the Bible's prohibition against homosexuality is in the same sentence as a prohibition against eating shellfish, which is in itself sandwiched among rules about menstruation and crop rotation, and all the latter are freely ignored in modern Western society while the former is used to justify every conceivable physical and psychological torture. We need more contemporary, popular novels that unmask this dangerous hypocrisy, although hopefully better written.  ) blueskygreentrees | Jul 30, 2023 |  ) bergs47 | Jul 5, 2023 | (  ) Kiramke | Jun 27, 2023 |  ) nyiper | May 19, 2023 |
 The novel bogs down for a long time in the middle with an excess of plot, but the moving final chapters affirm the power of books to change people’s lives even as they acknowledge the unbreakable bonds of home and family. Smart, literate and refreshingly unsentimental. In her bracingly tough-minded tale of a discontented librarian who hits the road with a maladjusted 10-year-old, Rebecca Makkai tips her hat to a shelf-load of children's literature, offering sly echoes of everything from "Charlotte's Web" by E.B. White to "Where's Spot?" By Eric Hill, while crafting her own distinctive sound in a first novel definitely not for kids. Makkai avoids almost all the pitfalls of debut fiction, including sentimentality and undigested autobiography, and though her plotting isn't as deft as her characterizations, the wonderfully nuanced closing pages more than make up for the occasional longueurs that precede them....Yet every conflicted word Lucy utters in Makkai's probing novel reminds us that literature matters because it helps us discover ourselves while exploring the worlds of others. Notable Lists
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML:In this delightful, funny, and moving first novel, a librarian and a young boy obsessed with reading take to the road. Lucy Hull, a young children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, finds herself both a kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, ten- year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home. The precocious Ian is addicted to reading, but needs Lucy's help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has enrolled Ian in weekly antigay classes with celebrity Pastor Bob. Lucy stumbles into a moral dilemma when she finds Ian camped out in the library after hours with a knapsack of provisions and an escape plan. Desperate to save him from Pastor Bob and the Drakes, Lucy allows herself to be hijacked by Ian. The odd pair embarks on a crazy road trip from Missouri to Vermont, with ferrets, an inconvenient boyfriend, and upsetting family history thrown in their path. But is it just Ian who is running away? Who is the man who seems to be on their tail? And should Lucy be trying to save a boy from his own parents? No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumRebecca Makkai's book The Borrower - AUDIO EDITION was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.  Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.41)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai - Jun 2011 LTER
Wikipedia in English
1
Rebecca Makkai
Publicado: 2011 | 290 páginas
Novela Humor Juvenil
Lucy Hull, una joven resignada a trabajar como bibliotecaria de libros infantiles en un remoto pueblo de Missouri, ayuda habitualmente a su lector preferido —Ian Drake, un niño de diez años obsesionado con la lectura— a escoger libros a escondidas de su madre, una mujer autoritaria que pasapor la censura todo lo que el niño quiere leer.
La inercia existencial de Lucy la lleva a tener una vida de pocas emociones, hasta que se topa con un dilema moral cuando conoce el plan que ha preparado Ian para escapar del control de su madre.