"I might be the villain of this story," Lucy Hull tells us by way of introduction. "Even now, it's hard to tell." Really, though, Rebecca Makkai isn't telling a story about heroes and villains in The Borrower, but about fumbling through difficult circumstances the best you can.
Lucy is a children's librarian in her mid-20s in a small city in Missouri she calls Hannibal (that's not its real name, but she can't resist the Mark Twain reference). She's starting to become frustrated with the direction her life has taken, and maybe that makes her a little more receptive to the problems of 10-year-old Ian Drake, one of her regular patrons, who just about everybody is convinced will grow up gay. One of the first signs of trouble was when he brought back Theater Shoes because his mother only lets him read "boy books," but Lucy subversively takes advantage of her ignorance to slip him classics like My Side of the Mountain and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Soon, though, Mrs. Drake arrives in person to advise that "what Ian really needs right now are books with the breath of God in them."
As Lucy digs into Ian's situation, she realizes that his parents are sending him to a ministry that promises to cure boys of their homosexual tendencies, but she can't bring herself to do anything about it until she opens the library one morning and finds Ian, who ran away from home the night before. One thing leads to another, and soon enough he's emotionally blackmailed her into a cross-country road trip.
Granted, this is not the most convincing turn of events, and Makkai's efforts to finesse the story and keep the police away don't always ring true. (Reader reactions to several interludes which describe Lucy and Ian's plight in parodies of children's literature styles will definitely vary.) She does, however, carve out an entertaining imaginary space in which Lucy's confrontation with her own life illusions gradually overshadows any attempt to "solve" Ian's sexuality crisis. The argument is handled sensitively; it's clear that Ian doesn't fully understand what's going on and why it makes him miserable, so Lucy tries not to attack his Christian faith while subtly encouraging him to accept himself. (Still, she realizes at one point, "obliquely comparing his family to the Nazis was maybe not my finest moment.") That grounding, and the great love for children's books that pervades the novel's voice, are sure to give The Borrower an extra boost of endearment for many readers.--Ron Hogan
Shelf Talker: Makkai, frequently anthologized in the Best American Short Stories series, makes her full-length debut with a young woman's "dramedy" in the vein of early Jennifer Weiner or Marian Keyes.