As a soon-to-be librarian myself, I’ve always been a sucker for librarians in fiction. Whether the love interested of a time traveler on a mission in Stephen King’s 11/22/63 or the supportive mentor for a young girl in trouble in Jo Walton’s Among Others, I simply start to smile when any book I’m reading introduces a librarian as a character, rather than simply a stereotype.
In Joe Hill’s NOS4A2, that librarian is Margaret Leigh, and unlike a lot of fictional librarians I can think of, she has a pretty unique ability.
The problem is, I really don’t want to spoil any of the story of NOS4A2 – which went on sale yesterday, as the book is just so darn good. In simplest terms, I like Margaret because she comes across as a three-dimensional character, and even though there are shades of the mythical Cassandra in her, she seems very much a person with her own identity.
The novel follows a young woman, Victoria McQueen, through an incredibly dark experience in her childhood and then races forward to her own parenting years and puts her in an even darker spot, as this time her child is at risk.
The novel is definitely Dark Fantasy, is clearly influenced by the works of Stephen King (in a great way), and had me putting an immediate hold on the only Joe Hill book I haven’t read so far, his 2010 Novel, Horns.
