the Library at the Edge of the World Review

Harper Perennial, 2017.

★★☆☆☆

Felicity Hayes-McCoy's The Library at the Border of the World is a feast of the senses for the eye aged female reader. Bonus points if: you honey comfortably safe prose, you can juggle an abundance of characters with artificial quirks, and can forgive chapter-opening sentences including, "Equally the day of the councilors' vote approached, the force per unit area was really on." This is Republic of ireland native Hayes-McCoy's first novel, having established a career in theater, radio and Idiot box; Library at the Border is her personal manifesto on the enchanting rurality of a small but bustling community along the crashing waves of the Irish coast. Equally a reader, the enjoyment available is directly proportionate to the amount of demographic information you share with Hayes-McCoy. Readers outside this target market place will observe an overly crowded, tone-deaf carnival of umbilicus-gazing.

Fiftysomething Hanna Casey is a librarian on Ireland's fictional Finfarran peninsula, where she drives along the declension in a mobile library to extend literature's reach to isolated communities. In her recent divorce, she pridefully refused to accept a penny from her philandering husband, merely in the opening chapter comes to regret this (heavily). Otherwise forced to reside with her imposing mother, she endeavors to renovate a coastal shack inherited from her grandmother, so equally to carve herself an independent space. Funded past a loan, she hires a contractor with an annoying personality and unconventional construction methods—and boy, practise sparks wing. Meanwhile, the peninsula'southward upkeep is nether threat of desperate restructuring, including a proposal to shut the library and tourist bureau and replace information technology with an app for tourists to use on cocky-guided tours. With the identity of the serene still spirited community thrust onto the chopping block, tin can a wide assortment of personalities band together to fight the tides of change and protect the status quo they and so cherish? Folks, you bet they will.

While the struggle for financial and residential independence is a worthy one, it's tough to go invested in the plotline when the protagonist is a 51-twelvemonth-onetime woman—one who's certainly Made Her Bed and is horrified at the thought of Having To Prevarication In It. Hanna's romantic resume features horrific choice in men, and when her wedlock crumbles she opts to exit without a financial prophylactic net. Until she changes her heed, at which signal it's likewise late. Information technology'due south hard to cheer for her quest to grow upwardly because this endeavor is so obviously overdue by 30 years. Her mission statement rings so hollow: "..the fourth dimension had come for a new jump of faith, a perilous investment of love and creativity, which would transform a hollow rock shell into a sanctuary. Her choice was fabricated, her money committed, and nothing could terminate her now."

Time out, anybody. A jump of religion, a perilous investment of love and creativity? No, Hanna is but paying someone else to renovate a cliffside shack. Backed by coin she doesn't have, since a loan's required to fund the attempt. Even paying it back is not looking good, with the commune's upkeep rearrangement poised to cutting funding for her library of employment. Hanna might as well be 1 of the millennials who have Instagram photos of themselves in Jiffy Lube waiting rooms with the explanation "Getting my oil changed. #Adulting." No, adulting is when you lie downward under the car, go your easily greasy and do it yourself. For Hayes-McCoy to present this endeavor every bit any kind of dauntless journey is an embarrassment.

Meanwhile, Hanna'due south daughter Jazz is fully employed, houses and feeds herself, and derives sufficient fulfillment from her lifestyle as a flight attendant. She could teach her mother a affair or two near personal responsibleness, but unfortunately the topic never comes upwardly. Jazz's relationship with her divorced parents, one of the very few interesting threads in this novel, is unfortunately kept at the margins. It operates silently in the background until the final few chapters, at which point the only fashion to tie it upwardly is with an abrupt "deus ex disaster" that reunites the major players for a final reckoning. Yuck.

There's a specific characterization device Hayes-McCoy leans on that begs to exist identified and indicted. Connor, one of the employees at Hanna's library, uses a Vespa scooter equally his primary mode of transportation. He drives his Vespa. He parks his Vespa.  He shows up on the Vespa, he departs (on his Vespa). "His Vespa" is needlessly mentioned so many times that no drinking game could compensate for the irritating frequency with which it's referenced. It'due south a cheap, lazy attempt to make a grapheme unique or memorable, and incredibly, information technology'southward not the simply example. Fury, the curmudgeon contracted to renovate Hanna's shack, is usually accompanied by his dog, the Divil. The Divil barks, the Divil jumps hither and thither, and most of all, the Divil contributes nothing to the story or thematic development. Each mention of the Vespa and the Devil is e'er capitalized, and each mention of the Vespa and the Divil is ever unnecessary.

The Library at the Edge of the World contains far as well many minor plot threads. Some of the peripheral characters eventually get capacity from their own perspective, just they trigger also big a momentum break to feel relevant, resulting in capacity that feel shoehorned in because there was no where else to put them. It's fair to look that if a novel chronicles a community'south attempt to ring together to preserve the cultural zeitgeist they cherish, logically information technology should include a wide variety of characters. Simply this novel merely stumbles through every opportunity to make relevant the inner workings of this scenic, fictional peninsula in Ireland. Hayes-McCoy also utilizes an odd style of dialogue in which characters' exact statements are sometimes presented in quotation marks merely are at other times (without alarm) slipped into larger non-quotation paragraphs.  It'south an capricious fashion choice that perfectly accentuates the best way to depict this book: a self-of import mess.

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Alex Yard is an ardent book lover and offbeat musician from Boston, Massachusetts.

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