The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

Do you know Rebecca Makkai's work? I think you should. Her fiction has been included in the Best American Short Stories 2008 and 2009 and 2010 and the forthcoming 2011. Now her just-out first novel The Borrower [[Kindle]] has this wonderfully hopeless premise: Lucy Hull, a single 26 year-old children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, befriends Ian Drake, a bookish 10 year-old who is clearly gay. Indeed, Ian is so obviously queer that his concerned religious parents make him go to weekly therapy sessions with an ex-gay minister married to an ex-lesbian. Eventually, sensible Ian runs away to live at the library, and, uh, Lucy, um, sort of invites him on a spontaneous roadtrip. He is THRILLED, the happiest time of his life. I know, you know, and Lucy knows, that kidnapping is always wrong. Nevertheless, it kills her to think of delightful little Ian being brainwashed by the ex-gays and, well, off they go...

According to The Book Frog, "If you get all the book references ("Where's Papa going with that ax? said Fern"), then so much the better, but you'll enjoy this wonderful novel either way."

Comments

[Cynthia]

Already have it! I can't believe I got a book before you wrote about it.