Bookworm in the City

No. 8 – A book with a one-word title

Booth / Karen Joy Fowler

The family history of John Wilkes Booth. The name doesn’t necessarily ring bells for many people in the NL, which I’m guessing is why the publisher made sure to add a blurb on the cover that mentions him as Lincoln’s killer.

The book caught my eye a while ago thanks to its gorgeous cover, but I feared it would be a difficult read.
Then recently, I passed the book in the library again and picked it up after all. And I’m glad I did, because it was an easier read than I had anticipated and I learned a lot.

Aside: I read in both English and Dutch, depending on availability / price of a book. I read Booth in Dutch; the title wasn’t changed in translation.

The family history is told from the perspective of Booth’s siblings and is fiction based on facts.
Every now and then Lincoln’s story seeps through as well, interwoven to remind the reader where he stood at the same time: there are quotes from letters and speeches, and passages telling about his personal life.
The Booth family history is dramatic with infant deaths, bigamy, money problems and alcohol abuse.
What makes them stand out from the average family at the time though, is the fact that they are famous and a lot gets written about them in newspapers.
Their father is an actor and all the children can recite Shakespeare. They all play-act in their younger years although it is only the boys that are allowed to dream of, and eventually chase, acting careers themselves.
The family income is depending on the jobs the acting members of the family can get, and good times are inevitably followed by bad times.
The siblings have very different personalities which causes tension and difficulties, but they do (almost) all stick together throughout the years.
The chapters are told from their different perspectives, although some siblings have a bigger, clearer, voice than others. The author explains in her notes, that this is due to the simple fact that some had more known about them.

The topics of politics and slavery are an aside to the story, they’re something that happens in the background, and doesn’t seem to be of much interest to the family. It must have been all the more shocking to have their son and brother do what he did.

I’m guessing this book would read differently if you are American or know more about the American Civil War. For me, a lot of it was new information (the treaties, politicians involved and incidents that preluded the war), but this is because my knowledge of John Wilkes Booth comes mostly from the tv show Timeless (loved that show) where they had an episode about Lincoln’s murder.

No. 25 – A book set in a country I’ve visited

The Librarian Spy / Madeline Martin
isbn 978-1-335-42691-8

In all honesty, this book was mainly purchased based on the title.
Finally, I thought, someone realized that the perfect spies are hidden in plain sight: librarians.
As a species, we generally know a lot of stuff because either we’ve read about it, or questions from patrons had us perform deep-dives into subjects. The job has us improvising basically all the time, and we’re great judges of character thanks to the sixth sense that tells us which patron or supplier is going to be trouble.
And, of course, we can sneak around quietly.

Why the book matches the challenge: it’s set in Portugal and France and I’ve been to both, so it’s kind of a two-for-one.
For some reason the Portugal part stands out more in my memory, and that’s nothing to do with the story, but mostly because I couldn’t remember reading a book that’s set in Portugal ever before. Books set in France, I’ve read a lot of those, making that country/setting stand out less.
Onto the story.

Ava works at the Library of Congress and gets recruited by the US military for a mission that involves gathering intelligence abroad. She’s brought to Lisbon, Portugal.
Lisbon is well-described as a hub for refugees and intelligence alike: a hotbed for intrigue.
Arriving from a safe and relatively quiet United States, Ava is appalled at the sight of the many refugees that have gathered in Lisbon, their living circumstances and the stress they experience, trying to secure passage to safer locations.
She’s also shocked to find out that in a neutral country, there’s no rationing and everything from food to clothes and makeup, is available as long as you have the money to buy: people who can afford it, party, eat and drink without holding back.
Only hours into her first day in Lisbon, Ava is swept up in the intelligence game and finds herself starting to get paranoid about everything and everyone.
Lisbon had not just Americans and Brits stationed, but the Germans were there as well and the Portuguese had their own secret police in the mix.
Nobody is who they seem and everybody is playing games: Ava’s confusion and paranoia is perfectly understandable.
Despite all that, she’s slightly disappointed when her bosses don’t want to utilize her full skillset and only have her gather and photograph international newspapers and journals.
So, she does what any librarian does when they are told “no”, and does it anyway. She starts to read the materials while she processes them. One of the papers she reads, is an illegal paper printed by the French resistance.
One of the women risking all to deliver the papers to readers in occopied territory, is Elaine, in Lyon.
Elaine joined the resistance after she learns her husband, who has been arrested, was part of a resistance group without telling her. She soon is all in and after starting out as a delivery girl, she moves onto printing.
Papers didn’t just print news, but they printed contact ads in code, so the resistance could communicate with allies outside of the country.
When Elaine stumbles onto a woman and child who are desperate to flee France for Portugal, and the US from there, she hides them and creates a code, asking for help.
It is Ava who spots and unscrambles the message, but she has difficulty navigating the red tape in Lisbon and has trouble getting a rescue mission going.

The story navigates easily between Lisbon and Lyon, free world versus occupied territory.
One woman enters the war eager to make a difference, the other is hesitant at first. Both remain true to themselves and refuse to give up when the going gets tougher than it already was.

I don’t know why, but I’d never read a book that is set in Portugal before.
I also hadn’t been to Portugal until earlier this year, when I fled the cold and grey weather of a typical Dutch winter, and got to enjoy the sun and warm air of the Algarve, in the south of Portugal, for a week (total bliss).
The Portuguese edition of The Librarian Spy featured in a lot of shop windows and I recognized the cover and realized that this very book was part of my to-be-read pile at home.
I started reading as soon as I got back.

There are many novels about women in the resistance and women in intelligence during World War II, and I’ve read a lot of them.
Most are okay, some are good, and a few are exceptional. I would qualify this one in the middle category, mostly because it’s different from the others in that it (partially) takes place in a neutral country and it has a librarian in it.

Reading tips about Portugal, librarians in wars, and women in intelligence are welcome!