Sylvia has scored a position as a Children’s Librarian in the quaint little town’s library. In the year 1958, a twenty five year old woman, Sylvia Blackwell, leaves her life in Swindon for a new one in the small market town of East Mole. The story that gently unfolds is one of friendship, love, aspirations and the power of books. It is of course set predominately in a library and follows the journey of Sylvia Blackwell, a young woman who takes up the position of a Children’s Librarian in a declining library. The Librarian, written by Salley Vickers, is a dream novel if you are a booklover. :(ĭespite my personal regret, I would still recommend this book, because it was a lovely reading experience for most of the time. It felt, like the author suddenly grew tired of it all and just dumped that hasty ending on the reader.

You need a completely different mindset & mood, which you are just not up to. It's like you were listening to a Mozart Symphony and after the conclusion of the 3rd movement, the track suddenly changes to, let's say, Schönberg. Well, I won't call it cheap, but it was just sooooo, sooooo out of tune and it made me disappointed. The story was suddenly cut without proper resolution and out-of-the-blue I was dragged back to the present, some 50 years later, where 2 characters, grown old, met and then kind of obscurely discussed what had happpened back then. And then came the ending or epilogue or part 2 as the author called it. The story was set at the end of the 1950s and I got totally immersed in it, with its small town, its bittersweet, though at the same time very humdrum storylines, the library and the characters: both the sympathetic and the nasty ones. There were parts where I would have given 5 stars without hesitation, but the end was spoiled for me. I mean a book about books and a children's library. Strictly speaking, this is more of a 3,5 star read when all is said and done despite my loving the story and the setting.

Salley vickers the librarian review