The Book Borrower - by Alice Mattison (Paperback)

About the Book

The author of "Men Giving Money, Women Yelling" now offers a moving, deftly structured novel depicting the friendship between two women that begins with the lending of a book--and lasts more than 20 years.

Book Synopsis

On the day they first meet in a city playground, Deborah Laidlaw lends Toby Ruben a book called Trolley Girl, the memoir of a forgotten trolley strike in the 1920s, written by the sister of a fiery Jewish revolutionary who played an important, ultimately tragic role in the events. Young mothers with babies, Toby and Deborah become instant friends. It is a relationship that will endure for decades--through the vagaries of marriage, career, and child-rearing, through heated discussions of politics, ethics, and life--until an insurmountable argument takes the two women down divergent paths. But in the aftermath of crisis and sorrow, it is a borrowed book, long set aside and forgotten, that will unite Toby and Deborah once again.

From the Back Cover

On the day they first meet in a city playground, Deborah Laidlaw lends Toby Ruben a book called Trolley Girl, the memoir of a forgotten trolley strike in the 1920s, written by the sister of a fiery Jewish revolutionary who played an important, ultimately tragic role in the events. Young mothers with babies, Toby and Deborah become instant friends. It is a relationship that will endure for decades--through the vagaries of marriage, career, and child-rearing, through heated discussions of politics, ethics, and life--until an insurmountable argument takes the two women down divergent paths. But in the aftermath of crisis and sorrow, it is a borrowed book, long set aside and forgotten, that will unite Toby and Deborah once again.

Review Quotes

"In deceptively quiet, guileless prose, she has described the mind numbing routine of child-care and the fraught, complex relations of men and women. Only Margaret Atwood (in "Cat's Eye") has written as knowingly about the frienship between women. Emotionally wrenching, beautifully realized work." --"The New York Times""Extraordinary." --"The Washington Post Book World""An ambitious and original novel...The author's determination not to tie things up is refreshing." --"The Wall Street Journal""This excellent novel weaves the story of a 1921 trolley strike...Mattison is concerned with the small decisions and coincidences that alter the course of our lives. Are they accidents, or impulses born of something deeper? Mattison's observations are so minutely compelling that each one feels like a shiny object, once lost but found unexpectedly." --"The New Yorker""A rich, textured exploration of misfortune and its consequences: a book that will reward any reader willing to go slow and absorb its course." --"Kirkus"