But, and it is quite a big but, part two just really seemed to jar against part one for me. It also shows how events of childhood can really shape a person – both for the better and sometimes the worse. Part two of the book really does demonstrate the benefits of libraries as centres of communities and as places for both learning and escapism. You’re left assuming that it’s Sylvia, but then rather disappointingly in my opinion you find it’s actually another of the people that you first met in East Mole. Without much by way of an introduction part two of the book is suddenly set in modern day and it’s a good few pages before you actually realise which of the book’s characters you are again following.

I was intrigued to find out what would happen next and was looking forward to seeing where the story would go, when suddenly part one finished and part two of the book began. Part one of The Librarian is set in the late 1950s and as it’s a period that I really enjoy I found myself loving Sylvia (even if I didn’t agree with all the choices she made in life!) and I became incredibly caught up in her life in East Mole and everything that was going on around her. In doing so the children’s library is dragged into a local scandal, and the results of it threaten Sylvia’s own job there. She ends up having an affair with the married GP and the neighbour’s son, caught between the attentions of two girls, ends up getting himself into all sorts of trouble.

In doing so and through inviting them to the library, she ends up making friends with three young children in particular – her neighbour’s son, her landlady’s grand daughter and the daughter of the local GP.īut things are not straight forward. She gets to know the family that live next door but one very well, and starts to try to reach out to local children and their families via both the WI and the local primary school. She moves into a small end of terrace cottage and tries to settle into village life. As a child she had a love of books and she wants to share that with other children. In 1958, Sylvia Blackwell takes up a new job as the children’s librarian at East Mole library. From one book that talks about the benefits of libraries, amongst other things, to a book set in a library and with the benefits of libraries and learning at the core of the story: The Librarian by Salley Vickers.

The librarian vickers