Eccentrics convene over literary classics

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This article was published 06/05/2023 (1188 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Small-town librarian Sloane Parker avoids conflict.

In her own words, “One of my greatest skills in this world — some might say it was my only skill — was how good I was at being inoffensive.”

Then Sloane meets Arthur McLachlan, a retired professor and dreaded daily visitor to the library.

Arthur is almost universally feared by the library staff, and he takes special pleasure in insulting Sloane and her taste in books.

But something about the spiteful man appeals to her — and even encourages her to stand up to him.

“I’d come to enjoy these little scuffles with Arthur McLachlan… And he always seemed happy to see me, even if nothing would prevail upon him to let it show,” Sloane tells us in prolific Washington-state author Lucy Gilmore’s latest, The Lonely Hearts Book Club.

Sloane gets worried when Arthur misses a few days at the library. So she tracks him down, finding him almost bedridden and trying to hide how happy he is to see her.

Determined to break down Arthur’s defences, Sloane creates an impromptu book club, attracting some of their town’s loneliest and most eccentric inhabitants.

As the group digs into classic novels, they develop a common goal of raising Arthur’s spirits and better understanding themselves.

Gilmore writes romance, “uplifting” fiction and mysteries under three pen names. The Lonely Hearts Book Club gives nods to all three categories.

The novel features romantic subplots, inspiring themes of redemption, self-worth and healing, as well as the mystery behind Arthur’s angry behaviour.

The characters are diverse and generally likable, though not always believable (Gilmore includes a working-from-home phone psychic, the son of a famous jazz singer and a famous literary critic among her book club members).

Different characters take turns narrating sections, which helps move along an otherwise slow plot.

While pleasant, comforting and easy to read, readers will be disappointed if they’re expecting a story on par with the likes of Karen Joy Fowler’s 2004 The Jane Austen Book Club, which re-examines Austen’s novels in the context of modern love.

The book club goes through some truly excellent reads, among them Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.

But while it’s clear Gilmore appreciates and understands the novels her characters reference, she makes only general and sometimes painfully obvious connections between them.

Such as when Arthur muses, “I’d always known I wasn’t a particularly likable man. Like Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man, I was sick and spiteful, two qualities that were so much a part of me that there was no way of killing them without killing the man they belonged to.”

Ironically, readers may be more interested in reading the books Gilmore references than in Gilmore’s novel itself.

Kathryne Cardwell is a writer and settler in Treaty 1 territory.