Ladies Lending Library

by: Janice Kulyk Keefer

Published by: HarperCollins

Reviewed by Barbara Fielder

Set in the ‘60s, this novel is filled with contrasts between mothers, those who are the participants in the Ladies Lending Library, and their pre-teen, teens and tykes–boys and girls.

The women have a proud Ukrainian heritage, and are characterized by Sonia, who is suffering through another protracted hot summer, living at the lake’s edge. Their children, on the other hand, have long past discovered the freedom of living an untroubled life between each long protracted school year. Or so it seems on the surface.

The author describes the women as laboring through the sun-baked week watching over their children play in the sand and water while their husbands toil in the city to make a living. To ease the long days and weeks between visits from their husbands, the women form their lending library of ribald books. Their hushed conversations about these books’ characters give them a focus beyond their own lonely or by comparison, dull lives.

It took some deliberate dedicated reading on my part to get past the melancholy and self-pity that seems to overwhelm Sonia, and several of the other women of the Ladies Lending Library. I wondered if there were any uplifting qualities in the characters or if the entire book would feel like pushing mud uphill.

Fortunately the book’s pace and characters pick up, primarily because of the author’s focus on the children, pre-teens and teenagers who are learning about their lives, their developing bodies and each other.

The boys are depicted as typical pranksters, some bullies and others who seem to disappear with little or nothing to offer and are fodder for the bullies.

Sonia’s girls, Katia, Bonnie and Laura, are the primary characters, and it is with them that you can connect with your own youth and the questions about yourself, your relationship with your siblings, mother and father.
Carefully woven into the fabric of the novel are the adult real-world issues, of love, despicable behavior, unvarnished, unpredictable and upsetting outcomes from troubled relationships.

Armchair Interviews says: We all sort of know these people.