A Sunday Times Top 10 BestsellerVickers sees with a clear eye and writes with a light hand shes a presence worth cherishing in the ranks of modern novelists Philip PullmanIn 1958 Sylvia Blackwell fresh from one of the new postwar Library Schools takes up a job as childrens librarian in a run down library in the market town of East Mole Her mission is to fire the enthusiasm of the children of East Mole for reading But her love affair with the local married GP and her befriending of his precious daughter her neighbours son and her landladys neglected grandchild ignite the prejudices of the town threatening her job and the very existence of the library with dramatic consequences for them allThe Librarian is a moving testament to the joy of reading and the power of books to change and inspire us all Underneath the delightful patina of nostalgia for postWar England there are stern and spiky questions about why we are allowing our children to be robbed of their heritage of story Frank Cottrell BoyceVickers has a formidable knack for laying open the human heart Sunday Times
