A review by erica_palmisano
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
I'm not sure why I didn't connect with this book emotionally. The story certainly has lots of drama and tension baked in and seems quite well researched. I also appreciated the authors' notes about the inspiration and process of writing. I think perhaps the style of the book itself was just a mismatch for me. Too much dialogue (much of it flowery, as befits the period but still). There was a lot of overt exposition that I wish had been more deftly handled. I'd have preferred the narrative to flow over months and years without drawing so much attention to exact dates. And so often, I wondered: why draw an explicit conclusion when one could leave some mystery and room for doubt in characters' motivations? The narrative made all the subtext into text and thus had a didactic vibe. When comparing it to another book about a white-passing woman in "The Vanishing Half," which I read just a few months ago, I wished it had more the nuance of the latter. However, I'm not a big aficionado of historical fiction so perhaps that's me bringing my literary fiction expectations to a genre that has its own conventions.
Minor: Abortion, Antisemitism, Colonisation, Grief, Infidelity, Outing, Racism, Sexism, Slavery, and Toxic relationship