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    The Borrower
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    The Borrower
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    The Borrower
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Borrower

    Written by Rebecca Makkai

    Narrated by Emily Bauer

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Lucy Hull, a young children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, is unsure where her life is headed. That becomes more than a figure of speech when her favorite patron, ten-year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home and Lucy finds herself in the surprise role of chauffeur.

    The precocious Ian is addicted to reading, but needs Lucy's help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has enrolled Ian in weekly antigay classes with celebrity Pastor Bob. Lucy stumbles into a moral dilemma when she finds Ian camped out in the library after hours with a knapsack of provisions and an escape plan.

    The odd pair embarks on a crazy road trip from Missouri to Vermont, with ferrets, an inconvenient boyfriend, and dubious family history thrown in their path. But who is actually running away? And from what?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighBridge Audio
    Release dateJun 9, 2011
    ISBN9781611744477
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for The Borrower

    3.5/5

    498 ratings85 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Cute, fun read about a young librarian who is forced to kidnap a young boy she has come to know and worry about. Very light, but intelligent.
    • 5/5
      Review originally posted here.

      The Borrower is an utterly enchanting tale, one that I should have gotten around to reading about a year ago. Instead, it had languished on my shelves until I finally decided to apply strict order to my review piles. I don't know why I didn't read this right away, because I loved it. If only I had opened the book up and read the very first page, I would have made space in my schedule for this novel.

      Rebecca Makkai's writing is charismatic and charming. Though her storytelling is largely straight forward, first person, she also plays with other styles in ways that are incredibly clever and entertaining. She mixes in, for example, a couple of charts, like ones illustrating how many of the ten commandments and seven deadly sins Lucy has committed. Even better, Makkai mixed in little snippets where Lucy imagines her predicament as told in the form of a children's book. The only two I recognized the books for were in the style of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie... and Goodnight Moon, but I'm sure an aficionado could identify the rest. These snippets captured Lucy's humor and her knowledge base so perfectly.

      Obviously, I'm a bit biased towards any book whose heroine is a librarian. Lucy works as a children's librarian, and I loved identifying aspects of librarianship that I recognize from the stories of others. The library parts are so true to life that I really think any librarian will seriously get a kick out of this story, especially children's librarians.

      I think librarians and educators are perhaps especially well-placed to appreciate this tale, since much of it is about the concern for what adults to youth in trying to mold them into a particular type of person. Ian Drake is the ideal child for a librarian; he's that kid that keeps the librarian motivated and interested in her job, because she so loves encouraging his passion for reading. Ian has one of THOSE mothers, the hyper-religious kind that wants to keep her child from reading anything untoward, instead forcing him to read only books he's not interested in.

      Fearful that Ian might be gay (though he's only ten, he apparently has some sort of flamboyance that makes them suspect), his parents book him in one of those rage-inducing (to me) anti-Gay programs. Lucy finds out about this and wants to do something, especially as she witnesses the change in Ian, like his reduced interest in reading and the library. Because of this, when Ian runs away, she's disposed to help him, rather than wrangling him back home when she should. Inadvertently, she becomes a kidnapper, and, while I don't condone her behavior, I do see how it happened. In this, Makkai walks a fine line between caring and creepy, between humorous and unsettling, and, to my mind, does so very well.

      The main focus of The Borrower is one of identity. Ian struggles to find his true self while his nature, his parents, Pastor Bob, Lucy, and everyone he knows try to make him be one thing or another. Lucy tries to balance her American half and Russian half. She desperately wants to be independent from her wealthy, possibly Russian mob parents, so has thrown herself into librarianship because it was the first career to come her way, but she has no idea if that's actually what she wants to do. Lucy's father, too, seems to wrestle with his identity and his past through his stories, in which he re-ensvisions his time in Russia. I love this quote on the importance of being oneself and must share it:

      "On my mental instant replay, I realized that obliquely comparing his family to the Nazis was maybe not my finest moment.
      He was quiet a second, and then he said, 'Did you know that Hitler anted to be an artist, but since he couldn't get into art school, he turned into a Nazi?'
      'Yes, I remember that.'
      'Just imagine if he got into art school, the whole world would be different.'
      I said, 'It just shows that people should be allowed to be who they are. If they can't, then they turn into nasty, sad people.'
      He started to laugh. 'What if you went to the art gallery, and the guy was like, "Here you see a beautiful Money, and here on your left is an early Hitler." Wouldn't that be weird?'
      I couldn't think of any subtle way to turn it back around again.
      He said, 'You would go to the gift shop and buy Hitler postcards, and you'd go, "Oh, look at this beautiful Hitler. I'm going to hang it in my room!" And people would wear Hitler t-shirts.'
      'Yes,' I said. 'That would have been better."

      Isn't that amazing? I just love the way the book was written. Different though they are in some ways, I think this book would make be an excellent readalike for Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. They share a similar whimsy, with young, adventurous heroes who have a unique view of the world. Both cover dark topics but through a sort of humor.

      If you like these quotes I've shared, by all means get yourself a copy of this book to enjoy. This is a definite must for any book lover.
    • 4/5
      A ten year old boy kidnaps his librarian and they drive from Hannibal Mo to northern Vermont. Told realistically from the librarian’s point of view when it needed more magical realism to avoid the obvious decisions. The middle second was squirm inducing in its sequence of feloniously bad choices.
    • 4/5
      I loved that this truly served as a tribute to my favorite children's books, many of which involved children hitting the road, escaping parents who were disconnected, or cruel, or who simply didn't understand them. The kids on their own trope, whether in the Mixed up Files or Harry Potter or the many other books that employed it is magical. Less magical is the kid with an adult accomplice spiriting him around in order to try to outrun her own discontent and alleviate her ridiculous boredom. (Do something you lazy sow! You have money, looks, autonomy and an education, your boredom is entirely your own fault.) Less magical is the journey that involves not security guards or demons, but rather Russian gangsters and creepy pseudo-relatives. Also less charming is Ian, the child at the center of the story, who makes Lucy "kidnap" him. Ian is like no child ever. As I read I wondered in Makkai had ever met an actual child. Also I wondered whether she has met an actual fundamentalist Christian. I am going to guess the answer to both questions is no. Still, the aforementioned references to wonderful children's books, and the great characters around Lucy (her father and uncle particularly) made most of this a fun little fantasy read. I love books that are about loving books.
    • 2/5
      This sounds like a book that would appeal to me: a young librarian bonds with a young boy, a patron of the library. When she finds him camped out overnight in the library, on the cusp of running away from home, she knows she should return him to his parents. But somehow they find themselves in her car, fleeing their Missouri town together.I made it about one-third of the way through this one, then decided to put it aside, probably for good. Despite the initial appeal, it just wasn't doing it for me. It was slow-moving and I found myself not looking forward to picking it back up. I used to be the type of person who persevered through a book, no matter the struggle, but as I get older, and there are SO, so many books waiting for me to read, I want to make sure I enjoy the ride. So with a new year (2019), if I find myself not particularly engaged with a book, I think one of my resolutions will be to move on without the guilt.Sidenote: I do still want to read Makkai's The Great Believers, as I've heard great things about that one.
    • 2/5
      Left me flat even though I wanted to love it. Saving graces: Gems abound for librarian readers and anyone who has evern enjoyed a wacky roadtrip with a friend from another generation.

    • 1/5
      WTH? This was so weird......

      There's a 9/10 yr old boy who comes into the library almost everyday.... The Librarian is young, liberal & single.... She and the boy become quasi-friends, due to the fact that she always gives him books to read.

      Enter his mother, evangelical she is..... controlling even more she is..... Mother demands the Librarian not allow her son to read certain types of books, which of course upsets both the Librarian & the boy.....

      Then the head-librarian & the boys parents come up with the idea that this child is "gay"..... Parents from Hell decide that this child must go to a "camp"......

      Both the Librarian & the boy disappear.........

      Blah, blah, blah, blah........

      This was a very Boooooooooooooooooooooooooring book

    • 3/5
      The cover--gorgeous!
      The story--sounds fantastic... Only on pg 67.

      There was so much to like about the storyline, but some of it didn't flesh out very well. Thank god the story wrapped up fairly well. I really felt like the author got her groove going once they left the library.
      I still enjoyed the story. It made me think about my own religion, and how natural is is to want to protect your children from outside influences. I love books. I can't imagine what my childhood would have been like had I been kept from certain books, let alone feeling like I must reprogram my whole being to be accepted by my parents.
    • 2/5
      Meh.

    • 1/5
      Dear goodness, this was dreadful. I took an instant dislike to the narrator, Lucy - "a simple maiden lady librarian". Aargh. Then it turns out that she isn't even a librarian. After taking an English degree, she goes to the careers office, caring "so very little where she went next" and ends up obtaining a list of contacts whom she emails in alphabetical order. The library is in the Bs and the contact urgently needed staff. "I had no library science degree and no experience". Wonderful. Tell that to all of the qualified librarians who compete for jobs. This doesn't stop her continuing to refer to herself as a librarian throughout the rest of the book. Irritating. Then there's this: "Once a year all the librarians in the county wedged themselves into high heels, tried to pull the cat hair off their sweaters with masking tape, and smeared their lips with an awful tomato red that had gone stale in its tube." What, they all used the same lipstick? Or, "I don't know why I was always so anxious to prove I wasn't one of those librarians, the ones who had left the benefit early to feed their cats." Lucy is 26. It wasn't clear to me whether the author was deliberately making her so obnoxious and dissatisfied with her job. There is a reference to the alternate life of the wife in 'It's A Wonderful Life' - "there she runs in thick glasses, clutching books to her useless breasts....how strange that this profession should be so associated with loneliness, virginity, female desperation." Is this a nod indicating that it is Lucy who sees librarianship in this way, and not the author? Like I say, it isn't clear, and it annoyed the hell out of me. Anyway. The book was written in 2011, and tells the story of Lucy, who fears that one of her 10 year-old borrowers is being indoctrinated by a homophobic church. So she and the boy run away. The plot is totally improbable. Her feeble justifications for the act are implausible. An adult with a job working with children just wouldn't be so stupid.I forced myself to finish the book anyway, and can only conclude that it was a reasonable idea poorly executed and horrendously cliched. The story is that Lucy wants to save the boy with book recommendations. Every library stereotype in the book is pulled out of the hat. Inexcusable in 2013.
    • 4/5
      As much as I wanted to love this book, which sounded as though it were tailor-made for me (Libraries! Classic children's literature! Russians! The triumph of people with precocious imaginations over the dull Philistines!), in the end it had that strained, airless quality common to all proselytizing tracts, no matter how well-written or how sympathetic the subject matter. Still, I recognize and am proud to acknowledge in these pages the ridiculous creed that I live by:"Because what it's come down to, after that whole messy spring, that whole tortured summer, all the time since, is this: I no longer believe I can save people. I've tried, and I've failed, and while I'm sure there are people out in the world with that particular gift, I'm not one of them. I make too much of a mess of things. But books, on the other hand: I do still believe that books can save you."
    • 2/5
      This book is all about right and wrong. Only it is poorly written. It follows a children's librarian as she runs away with a young gay boy. To keep him away from his homophobic parents. She plays right into his hand. The librarian was more the child than the boy. It irritated me to no end. Any adult would have given the child a safe place to talk and even maybe helped him find pflag. However an adult would not allow a small child to talk her into taking him on a crosscountry adventure without any reparations or even getting caught. Lucy the librarian was boring as an individual and it was horrid being inside her head. She could barely make the correct decisions for herself let alone for a child. Don't bother just talk to any indefinite adolescent of the recent generation.
    • 5/5
      Oh. A love letter to books, childrens' books, libraries and librarians. Loved the narrator's humor, the child's voice, the sweetness without being cloying. Now I want to read The Pushcart War again.
    • 3/5
      I found this a truly enjoyable book with some insightful glimpses into the minds of we book-addicts. Funny; opinionated; the plot may be a tad far-fetched but it is worth suspending disbelief to go along on the ride. The last couple pages stunned me with a beautiful musing on nothing less than life itself.
    • 3/5
      Children's librarian Lucy Hull and her favorite young patron, Ian Drake, take an unexpected road trip from Missouri to Vermont.
    • 4/5
      Yes, there are plausibility issues, but I still really enjoyed this book. I thought both Lucy and Ian were well-drawn. And I really wanted to know what happened; I could barely put it down.
    • 2/5
      I thought this an odd little book. About a librarian who takes a 10-year-old boy (Ian) on a road trip, mostly because she doesn't agree with how his parents are raising him. It seems that Ian may be gay, so his very religious parents have him in a Christian "reprogramming" class. This flies against everything the liberal librarian believes and she takes it upon herself to share with him that he is fine the way he is.

      There are many layers in this story, like her lying Russian immigrant father with questionable means of income; the man in the wheelchair who may or may not love the librarian, but who certainly has trouble keeping his mouth shut; the alcoholic head librarian; the gay couple who own a theater, above which the librarian lives.

      On the surface, this is a war between Christian and not, conservative and liberal, strict belief and tolerance. Obviously, the author is the latter of the three. A twist, though, comes when the reader realizes that the librarian is just as intolerant as the parents. After all, they are not trying to imprint their beliefs on the rest of the world; they are simply raising their only son as best they know how. The librarian is the real threat here, as she strives to make sure the child believes as she does. Whether or not you agree with the gay issue, her behavior is what we stand against.

      Another issue is the fact that the librarian is really not imprinted in the life of anyone else. She realizes this slowly as her friends don't miss her when she disappears, her landlord doesn't even realize she is gone, the man she thinks loves her has an entire life of which the boys knows, but she doesn't. She slowly realizes that she is but a ghost of a person.

      Ian is eccentric and irritating. The librarian is neurotic (the fact that I can't even remember her name says it all). The parents are like cartoons characters in their stereotypical Russian roles. The best part of the book is the last three pages.

      I would not recommend this one.
    • 4/5
      Beautiful, provocative, tragic, and fun. Almost perfect. My only quibbles are that the librarian could have made a difference in the child's life without the drama (but then she wouldn't have made her own personal journey of growth), and that the other librarians were caricatures and not believable. Highly recommended if you can manage a bit of suspension of disbelief.
    • 5/5
      Oh my gosh, I LOVED this! It was such a quick read for me--one of those books you can't put down, but that you hate for it to end. I really felt like I could identify with the protagonist. I especially appreciated that the author listed so many titles of books that she felt would be great for this kid to read--several were books I've read (as a kid or as an adult), and there were even more that I'm going to be adding to my To Read list!

      I borrowed this from my local library, to read on my Kindle Fire. However, I'll be attending a conference next month that the author's supposed to be at--I'm thinking I'm going to buy a copy to have her sign. I really enjoyed this and would love to read it again!!!
    • 3/5
      Had another book in mind when this became available on my ereader. Ughhh when that happens. But, just so happens that this was more interesting than the one I had thought it was. Confused ?
      Well, this book is confusing, also ?
      Huge stretch of reality on the premise.
      Still I read and read and had to know how it ended. (Well enough)
      A children's librarian and one of her too bright and "much too parented" patrons end up on a road adventure.
      Many references to young adult books that I'm adding to my 'to-read' list.
    • 5/5
      Okay fellow librarians, this one is for you. Not only does this author do us justice, she makes us laugh and cry and brings to life kids that we have all known and cared for. A must read.
    • 3/5
      The cover--gorgeous!
      The story--sounds fantastic... Only on pg 67.

      There was so much to like about the storyline, but some of it didn't flesh out very well. Thank god the story wrapped up fairly well. I really felt like the author got her groove going once they left the library.
      I still enjoyed the story. It made me think about my own religion, and how natural is is to want to protect your children from outside influences. I love books. I can't imagine what my childhood would have been like had I been kept from certain books, let alone feeling like I must reprogram my whole being to be accepted by my parents.
    • 2/5
      Strange book. I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but afterwards every time I thought about it, it moved down a notch in my rating.
    • 4/5
      Lucy Hull is twenty-six and unmarried, a children's librarian in a fictional Hannibal, Missouri. The only child of a Russian immigrant father and a Jewish American mother, Lucy grew up in Chicago, bookish, very slightly rebellious, the inheritor of genetic guilt on both sides of the family. Always a little ashamed of her father's dubious business dealings, she fled to Missouri after college as a way to distance herself from her parents and their probably tainted money.Despite sometimes viewing herself as a bit of a cliche, Lucy likes her job and the mission it provides her. She runs the Chapter Book Hour reading group every Friday afternoon (they're reading Roald Dahl's deliciously subversive Matilda as the story begins), she oversees the summer reading program, she passes out candy on Halloween, with double candy and a bookmark to any kid dressed as a character from a book. She lives in an apartment above a theater amid towering stacks of books. Her conversation is peppered with book quotes and references, and she loves nothing more than recommending just the right book. Her best and favorite library client is a loudly precocious and somewhat flamboyant ten-year-old called Ian Drake, a voracious and sophisticated reader. When Ian's mom approaches Lucy at her desk in the library one afternoon to complain gently about Lucy's having given him Tuck Everlasting (about a family who's found the gift of immortality and the choice a young girl must make), Lucy is perplexed. Then Ian's mom requests that Ian only be allowed to check out books with "the breath of God in them," ignores Lucy's response that although she herself must allow her patrons full access to all the books it would certainly be Mrs. Drake's right to choose Ian's books for him, and finally whips out a list of topics ("Witchcraft/Wizardry; Magic; Satanism/Occult Religions, etc.; Adult Content Matter; Weaponry; The Theory of Evolution; Halloween; Roald Dahl, Lois Lowry, Harry Potter, and similar authors") which she'd like Ian to avoid. What else can Lucy do but nod and say she understands (though never actually agreeing to these terms)?Not long after this encounter, Lucy learns that Ian is attending weekly sessions with a man who calls himself Pastor Bob. Pastor Bob is "formerly" gay, now born again, married to a reformed lesbian, and on a mission to de-gay the rest of the world. So really, what can she do, several months later, when she arrives at work early one morning to discover that Ian has run away from home with a backpack full of power bars and a hobo bag on a stick? She finds herself, against her better judgment but seemingly without a choice, on the lam with Ian. Lucy's not exactly a kidnapper...but she really should know better. And yet, though compelled by forces she can't quite bring herself to comprehend, Lucy has never seen Ian more gleeful, and the thought of getting him out of Pastor Bob's clutches--though the two of them never, ever talk about it--keeps her driving.I couldn't stop comparing Lucy and Ian's journey to that of Ava and the Bird Man in Karen Russell's Swamplandia!, released earlier this year. Both are unconventional and discomfiting pairings of unrelated adult and child companions on journeys seemingly directed by the child. But, where the reader's discomfort with Ava's journey never for a moment lets up, and it ends much as one fears it will, that of Lucy and Ian is one of wholesome, if weird, discovery (and sometimes joy). In The Borrower Rebecca Makkai manages to write from Lucy's guilt-ridden, self-flagellating perspective while maintaining a light--and frequently hilarious--tone. Even Lucy's frequent moments of doubt and dread are balanced out by the spot-on deftness of the narrative, complete with passages written in the mode of authors from Eric Carle to Margaret Wise Brown to Lewis Carroll and beyond. The Borrower is a book for readers, for lovers of personal freedom and the beauty of being oneself, whoever that self may be. 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.
    • 4/5
      If you intend the listen to the book, rather than read it, try to avoid the Emily Bauer version. It nearly stopped me listening
    • 5/5
      Lucy and Ian are absolutely lovable characters! I'm so impressed with Makkai's writing and I picked her book up entirely by accident. The copyright is 2011 and her debut novel....just delightful writing. Of course in the crazy times we are now in it would probably be up for banning!! Having Lucy be such a book lover herself made the story rather enchanting with the enormous amount of exchanges about books and yes, poems and songs from the past. Thoroughly enjoyable reading material and I'm so glad she didn't stop writing....there are MORE Makkai books for me to read!!
    • 3/5
      This story of a librarian who essentially kidnaps one of the regular child visitors to the library is at best entertaining. However none of it was even slightly realistic. There was so much going on in this story I wondered if the main character Lucy was possibly having a mental breakdown. And the fact that there was no consequences to any of her actions just made it over the top for me. Simple and easy read if you are looking for something very light.
    • 3/5
      The main story was too improbable and the main character was a bit flat, but this is probably due to the preposterous situation. But the in between bits were great. The musings, the book games, the Russian stories. I will be interested in reading something else by this author.
    • 3/5
      The story starts out strong, but flails in the second half and just kind of peters out. I don't know if there could have been a better ending, giver the way the story meanders through the second half.
    • 4/5
      Found this on a library shelf under "not to be missed" or something like that, and they were right. I loved it; I inhaled it. What a good, funny, propulsive, light but serious and wistful book, especially for anyone who loved reading and libraries as a child. As a bonus, it reminded me of my favorite childhood book, which I pressed on my own children: "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler."