City of Girls

By Elizabeth Gilbert

The Lily Playhouse is a crumbling theatre in 1940s New York, hosting shows with chorus lines, flashy dancers, and not much plot.  Vivian Morris, a 19 year old girl recently kicked out of Vassar College, is set to spend the summer there with her Aunt Peg, the Lily’s owner. What follows is a romping good time for Viv, a young girl with a taste for adventure and a flare for fashion! Making quick friends with flashy showgirls and handsome lead actors, Viv throws herself at life with reckless abandon. When her joie de vivre gets her into a bit more trouble than she can flirt her way out of, Viv is forced to leave New York and reassess her life. 

Told from the perspective of Viv as a 95 year old woman, the narration follows Viv’s fabulous, flouncy life as a young adult, as well as her personal development through her twenties, thirties, forties, and beyond. Living through World War 2, moon landings, and the ups and downs of day to day life, Viv manages to go from a relatively vapid youth to a skilled tailor and dearly beloved friend to her community at large. 

While the bright lights, partying, and excitement of New York City was entertaining for the first portion of the book, I found I really enjoyed seeing Viv progress beyond that character.  She went through a lot of really interesting character developments and managed to turn into someone who is still interesting and exciting, but far less exhausting.  This change really came through with the help of the various different friendships Viv forms throughout her life.  While this book was initially described to me as an exciting, flirty, 1940s New York style novel, I would argue it is far more an ode to friendship.

The Library Book

The Library Book

By Susan Orlean

The fire that gutted the Los Angeles library in 1986 was shocking to staff, patrons and the community at large.  This was a library that housed research collections, the largest record of patents in the U.S., a history of the entertainment industry in L.A., a huge collection of maps, as well as popular reading and children’s material.  The L.A. library was very well used at the time, creating a hub of humanity in an otherwise impersonal downtown L.A.  To have a building, or rather an institution like this destroyed by fire was devastating for many.

But how did the fire start?  Susan Orlean delves into the investigation, the witnesses, and the prime suspect to an arson, Harry Peak.  Orlean is clearly fascinated by the idea that someone could burn down a library, and she has extensively researched Harry Peak’s background.  Harry is an enigma, a man who changes his story at every turn, and who is somewhat down on his luck.  He’s a good-looking wannabe actor like so many others.  But how does this translate into becoming an arsonist? 

Chapters on the fire and subsequent investigation are interspersed with a history of the L.A. Library, including its eclectic list of City Librarians.  These include Charles Lummis, a man who walked from Ohio to California and whose favourite accessories included a sombrero and moccasins, and women like Tessa Kelso and Mary Jones who abolished membership fees and began to make the library accessible for children.  Readers learn about the lives of many of the librarians as well, as Orlean asks what drew them to libraries in the first place.

Maybe it’s because I’m a librarian, but I loved this book.  (Actually, my son’s basketball coach recommended it, so I think it appeals to many.)  It’s not just a dry history of a particular library.  Rather, it’s a celebration of the institution we call the library.  It details its evolution from book depository to community gathering place.  It revels in the library’s role in education, democracy and equality.  And it underscores the idea that rather than become obsolete, libraries have matured, and continue to meet their communities’ ever-changing needs. If you love the library for any reason, I highly recommend this book! 

Strange Practice

Vivian Shaw

Dr. Greta Helsing has the most unusual medical practice in modern London: most of her patients are dead. But if you are a banshee with laryngitis, a vampire with a head cold, or a mummy slowly succumbing to the ravages of time, who else are you going to call. Her family has had this practice for generations, and some of her family friends date back that long too. And she will need to learn to rely on those friends for help when a cult begins killing both her beloved monsters and humans across London.

So with her gang Edmund Ruthven (vampire), Sir Francis Varney (vampyre, with a ‘y’), Fastidocalon (ancient and inhuman, but not even Greta is quite sure what he is), August Cranswell (human, working at the British Museum), Greta finds herself unwilling drawn into both the serial killing the newspapers refer to as the Rosary Ripper, whose victims are found eyeless and naked with cheap rosaries stuffed in their mouths, and an attack on Varney by people dressed like monks, using garlic and a dagger poisoned specifically against the undead. And she can’t help but feel there is a connection between the two cases.

As the bodies pile up and Greta gets more involved in the cases, the danger ramps up for herself and her friends, becoming a race to solve the case or die trying. But whoever is behind this has been covering their tracks very well, and it doesn’t leave her, or the police, much to go on. Fortunately, Greta has some very talented and resourceful friends, because it will take all of their combined wits and courage to see this through. After all, it can be helpful to have friends who can become invisible or bend steel bars sometimes.

Through it all she has to maintain those friendships, run her business, and resist the powerful attraction she’s beginning to feel for one of her patients.

This is a good edge-of-your-seat mystery with likeable characters and unexpected twists and turns. This is the first Dr. Greta Helsing novel, and I’m looking forward to seeing where the author, Vivian Shaw, takes these characters next. The mix of action, locations, fantastic situations, mystery, and a hint of romance is a very pleasant combination.

Dethe Elza is a Digital Services Technician at the Brighouse Branch of the Richmond Public Library, where he helps kids learn to write their own computer games.