Wednesday, February 15, 2012

"The Borrower" Is A Little Hard to Buy


I don’t know if ten is old enough to classify someone’s sexual orientation. My personal belief is that being gay isn’t a choice. However, I’m not sure if age ten is really the age where you can tell what the kid is going to be. Kind of seems to be a little early for that. That being said, everyone who works at the library at Hannibal, Missouri, seems to think that ten year old Ian is probably, well, gay. He’s a smart kid, constantly taking out books. His parents however have different ideas. They too see something in him. They too think he’s gay. They happen to be bible thumpers. That’s the predicament the children’s librarian Lucy finds herself in, as she starts to care deeply for the boy. Ian’s mother sees the stuff that Ian is taking out from the library, and hands Lucy a list of books that Ian cannot take out. Harry Potter is out. Anything with what she calls “the breath of God” is in. Lucy starts to become a bit obsessed with Ian, and decides that she needs to save Ian, who has been enrolled in a class to teach him how not to be gay taught by a man named Pastor Bob. That’s the moral problem at the center of Rebecca Makkai’s debut novel, “The Borrower.”

The tone of the novel is mostly light, as it’s narrated by the young librarian, Lucy. She informs us she did really well in college, but she had no desire to really do anything amazing with her life. She thought just being a librarian is a nice profession. So, the book starts out pretty normal. Trying to meet a boyfriend, holding reading groups, reading to the kids and attending fundraisers for the library is some of the normal stuff librarians do in a small town. However, one night she sees’s Ian camping out in the library stacks. She at first is going to take him home to his house. Then he coaxes her into not taking him home, and instead they hit the road. Along the way, they meet up with some characters. The more charming is Lucy’s father in Chicago, who is a Russian immigrant who delights telling us stories about his adventures in the USSR.

The political commentary throughout the novel sometimes works and something makes the reader roll his or her eyes because the tone of the voice in the book is funny, and the novel feels like a light read. So, when the narrator mentions a ton of times her thoughts about America and acceptance, it can be a bit much. The novel tries very hard to be quirky and charming, and it often is. Ian is a charming kid, in that he doesn’t take his kidnapping all that seriously. He seems to see it as a big adventure and constantly says they have to stop to see landmarks and see Canada. Lucy constantly worries throughout the novel she is going to get caught. That’s what makes the novel a little unlikely.

She doesn’t seem to get caught. However, the novel does seem to bring up the question of if parents should be able to raise their kids anyway they want? I don’t think so. If your son is gay, you shouldn’t be allowed to try to somehow make him not gay. I understand Lucy’s concern, and her trip doesn’t end with that big of a bang. The novel is right with the assumption that often the type of kids who turn to books are those who are the ones who are a little quirkier than the rest. Not to say that all kids who pick up a book aren’t fine, but a lot of kids who do pick up the books are looking for escape and validation. I felt bad for both Lucy and Ian in the novel, and they aren’t bad characters. That being said, this is very obviously a first novel. There’s some going back and forth between genres as a road trip novel, a light novel and a novel about bigger issues.

I don’t think Lucy would have gotten away with this in real life. The ending doesn’t quite tie it all together. However, I was happy to accept the ending, because Lucy did the wrong thing for what appears to me to be the right reasons. That being said, you can’t just take a kid because you don’t like their parents. That’s where the novel’s fault lies. So, it becomes a bit hard for the reader to accept that. I don’t think the novel comes off as realistic with that.

She tells us she would like to think books can save. I too would like to believe that. Throughout the novel, Lucy makes references to other books. She references mostly children’s book, including the famous trilogy “His Dark Materials” by Philip Pullman, towards the end of the book. That’s an interesting choice. If Ian’s mother wanted Harry Potter out of her kid’s life, because she assumes it has some kind of anti-Christian message, than she hasn’t seen anything yet. Here’s hoping Ian sneaks "His Dark Materials" out of the local library sometime.