The Book Borrower: A Novel

by Alice Mattison

Overview

On the first page of The Book Borrower, Toby Ruben and Deborah Laidlaw meet in a city playground where they are looking after their babies. Deborah lends Toby a book, Trolley Girl, a memoir about a 1920s trolley strike and three Jewish sisters, which will disappear and reappear throughout the twenty-two years these women are friends. Toby and Deborah raise children in the seventies while arguing over Patty Hearst and the meaning of life. They find work teaching inner-city day-care workers, a job that leads to conflict between them. Meanwhile, Toby reads the opening chapters of Trolley Girl with interest, but puts the book aside when its story turns tragic. Ten years later we find Toby and Deborah adjunct English instructors at a college. They are mothers of school-age children, stealing time to drink a beer, still deeply involved in their difficult friendship. The borrowed book has long since disappeared from Toby's consciousness. Another decade passes. Toby and Deborah spend a November afternoon hiking down a trail in the park. They never imagine that the outing will be their last together. In the final chapters of the novel, The Trolley Girl reemerges from Toby's dusty bookshelf and unexpectedly helps her come to terms with this agonizing loss.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061153020
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/16/2008
Series:	P.S. Series
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	278,302
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.68(d)

About the Author

Alice Mattison is the award-winning author of four story collections and five novels, including Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn. She teaches fiction in the graduate writing program at Bennington College in Vermont and lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Read an Excerpt

The Book Borrower
A Novel

Chapter One

Though she was pushing a baby carriage, Toby Ruben began to read a book, On a gray evening in late November 1920 and the wheel of the carriage a big, skeletal but once elegant Perego she'd found in somebody s trash rolled into a broken place in the sidewalk. The baby, tightly wrapped in a white receiving blanket, glided compactly from carriage to sidewalk. He didn't cry. Like his mother, the baby would be troubled more by missed human connections than by practical problems; also the three-second rule held: as if he were a fallen slice of bread, Ruben snatched him up and ate him. Kissed him passionately and all over, dropping the wicked book into the carriage. She put the baby back where he belonged and picked up the book, but she didn't read for at least a block. Then she did read.

On a gray evening in late November 1920, an observer who happened to be making his way up the hill from Dressier's Mills to the streetcar line that ran to the principal square of Boynton, Massachusetts, might have noticed a sturdy young woman hurrying through the mill s gates. The air was full of cinders, which must have been why she reached up to tie a veil over her face, though she did so with a gesture so casual, so obviously

Ruben had to cross a street. She closed the book. It was thin, with black covers, not new.

Want a book? a woman in the park had said. The woman wore a blue-and-white-checked dress like a pioneer s, but sleeveless. A wide neckline bared her freckled chest; with good posture she chased serious, muddy daughters in pink pinafores. Ruben s baby, Squirrel, was three months old. Go, Squirrel, go, Ruben shouted, just sothe woman, sweeping by, would speak.

What? Sunny hair rose and settled.

He's trying to put his thumb in his mouth.

The woman leaned over to look, her hair over her face, and Squirrel found his thumb for the first time. Excellent, said the woman, Deborah Laidlaw, straightening, then giving a push to the small of her back. She left her hand there. When their conversation, skipping some subjects, arrived at sex and husbands, Deborah said, Jeremiah has intercourse only to music.

Any music?

Folk songs.

It was 1975.

Fuck songs! Ruben was surprised to have said that. Her hair was dark red but thin, and she was shorter than this impressive Deborah. In the songs, Ruben supposed, people built dams, harpooned whales, or cut down trees, while Jeremiah penetrated his wife.

History. He'll read any book about history, said Deborah, but mostly trolleys.

Trolleys?

Streetcars. He s obsessed with the interurbans. But there aren't any songs about trolleys.

Clang, clang, clang went the trolley! sang Ruben, flat who never sang for anyone but the baby.

Doesn't count. Want a book?

Jeremiah had found it in a used bookstore. He had begged Deborah to read it, but she only carried it back and forth to the park in a striped yellow-and-white cotton tote bag.

I am not interested in trolleys, said Deborah. Jeremiah has a theory about the person in the book. I don t care.

It s history?

A woman writing about her early life. About her sister.

It sounds interesting, said Ruben politely.

Good. You read it.

Ruben took the book: Trolley Girl, by Miriam James.

You can t keep it, said Deborah; Ruben was embarrassed but they d meet again. The daughters were Jill, who talked, and Rose, a big baby. Jill collected sticks and demanded to throw them into the river, a narrow glinty stream visible through trees. So Deborah carried Rose on her hip, striding away from Ruben, down a wooded slope where the carriage couldn't follow. Ruben watched: the back of a muscular woman walking in sandals, her dress disheveled by a child on her hip, and an earnest child running carefully, turning every few feet--this way!--as if only she knew where to find the river. Ruben had never been in this park, though she d lived in the city for most of a year, busy being pregnant. Forever she would have to remind herself that Deborah hadn't made the river.

She pushed her glasses up her nose and started for home. How snug and well-outfitted she would be when the Squirrel could ride on her hip, leaning confidently against her arm one short leg in front and one behind her--pointing like Rose, who used her mother as a friendly conveyance. Now he was only a package. At the sidewalk she opened the book. Then came--terrible to think about--the broken place, and then, when she d just begun the book again, the street to cross, and a dog she looked at. But now.

The Book Borrower
A Novel. Copyright © by Alice Mattison. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Reading Group Guide

Plot Summary
Toby Ruben and Deborah Laidlaw meet in 1975 in a New York City playground, where the two women are looking after their babies. Deborah lends Toby a book, Trolley Girl -- a memoir about a 1920s trolley strike and three Jewish sisters -- that will appear, disappear, and reappear throughout the years in which these women are friends.

Toby and Deborah raise children in the seventies, arguing over Patty Hearst and the meaning of life. They find work teaching inner-city day-care workers, a job that leads to conflict between them. Meanwhile, Toby reads the opening chapters of Trolley Girl with interest, but puts the book aside when its story turns tragic.

Jump ahead ten years and we find Toby and Deborah adjunct English instructors at a college. They are mothers of school-age children, stealing time to drink a beer, still deeply involved in their difficult friendship. The borrowed book has long since disappeared from Toby's consciousness.

Another decade passes. One day during a hike, they have an argument that cannot be resolved-and the two women take different, permanent paths, one of which leads to a heartwrenching tragedy. In the midst of mourning and loss, it is ultimately the borrowed book that brings them back together. With sensitivity and grace, Alice Mattison shows how books can rescue us from our deepest sorrows; how the events of the outside world play into our private lives; and how the bonds between women are enduring, mysterious, and laced with surprise.

Discussion Questions

When the two women meet, Deborah Laidlaw is depicted as a mainstream mother and wife with many friends and ties withinthe community. Yet she becomes best friends with Toby Ruben, a prickly and strange newcomer. Why do you think she chooses Toby? What qualities about Toby attracted Deborah?

The author always refers to the main character as "Ruben," the character's last name. But when others address her, they call her "Toby," her first name. Why do you think the author chose to refer to her this way? Did it affect your feelings toward Toby Ruben (i.e. make you feel more or less intimate with her?)

The saying goes: "With friends like these, who needs enemies?" Twice, Toby Ruben sabotages her best friend's employment by telling her bosses that she doesn't think Deborah is a good teacher. Why does Toby do this? Is it a breach of friendship? How do you think they continue to be friends after these episodes? Could you?

Toby Ruben is accused by her best friend Deborah of having a "kindness deficit." But ultimately she ends up taking care of a cantankerous old woman. Is Toby truly unkind?

Toby Ruben does not have a strong sense of sympathy for others. Why do you think the story of The Trolley Girl was painful for her to read?

The anarchist, rabble-rousing sculptor Berry Cooper/Gussie Lipnick jumps from the pages of the long-borrowed book The Trolley Girl into real life just at the time when Toby needs her most. Why do you think the troublesome Berry Cooper is an antidote to Deborah's death? Have you ever experienced a coincidence that changed your life?

After Deborah's death, the rumor surfaces that she had a lover who she was on her way to meet when her car crashed. Deborah had never told Toby about this. Do you think it was true? Why or why not?

Husbands and children are secondary characters in The Book Borrower-in fact, Deborah speaks of wanting to keep husbands out of their friendship. Why did Deborah loan Toby her husband's favorite book? What was the nature of Toby and Jeremiah's relationship?
About the Author: Alice Mattison grew up in Brooklyn and studied at Queens College and Harvard. Her collection of intersecting stories, Men Giving Money, Women Yelling, was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year. She is also the author of Hilda and Pearl and Field of Stars, two collections of stories, Great Wits and The Flight of Andy Burns, and a collection of poems, Animals. She has been published in The New Yorker, Glimmer Train, Southern Humanities Review, North American Review, Boulevard, and the Threepenny Review. She resides in New Haven, Connecticut and teaches fiction in the Bennington Writing Seminars, a low-residency Master's program at Bennington College in Vermont. She is currently at work on her next novel as well as a new collection of short stories.

Editorial Reviews

A charmer...one of those uncommon writers who are genuinely tickled by the ids and egos they commit to paper.

New York Times Book Review

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.

New York Times

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.

New Yorker

An ambitious and original novel...The author's determination not to tie things up is refreshing.

Wall Street Journal

Extraordinary.

Washington Post Book World

The pleasures, intimacies, tensions and failures of female friendship frame this subtle, psychologically rich novel, which chronicles the volatile relationship between two women and highlights issues of loyalty, sacrifice and guilt. In brisk, energetic prose, Mattison (Hilda and Pearl) investigates the prickly territory between affection and unconscious jealousy, avowals of devotion and secret betrayals, commitment and selfishness. On the day in 1975 when they meet in a Boynton, Mass., playground with their respective young children, Deborah Laidlaw loans Toby Ruben Trolley Girl, a book about a tragic trolley-car accident that occurred in the town in 1920. Ample, embracing, generous Deborah is a Catholic earth mother. Ruben (she thinks of herself only by her surname) is a harder person, Brooklyn-born, rough-edged, subconsciously resentful, Jewish. Despite their apparent incompatibility and Ruben's competitive streak, the two women sustain a deep attachment over two decades, interrupted twice when Ruben causes Deborah grief (and her job) by denigrating her teaching ability (a profession they both share). But an essential affinity always draws them back together, and they debate existential questions in a quirky sort of verbal shorthand, until the day when Deborah declares to Ruben: "You have a kindness defect,'' and admits she's frightened of Ruben's harsh assessment of herself and others. Suddenly, Deborah's death in an auto accident and the reappearance of the book Ruben borrowed long ago (passages from which have been interspersed in the narrative) connect. Trolley Girl's protagonist--an unrepentant anarchist who caused the deadly accident when she was young--turns out to be an elderly sculptor already entwined in Ruben's life. Through her, Ruben achieves insights into the insidious ways unconscious anger can undermine relationships. Mattison constructs her layered plot with the skill of a gem-setter, showing small facets of Ruben's growing understanding of her own failings as a friend and human being, and as she finally understands Deborah's legacy of tolerance and hope. Agent, Zoe Pagnamenta, Wylie. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

When Toby meets Deborah at the playground, they strike up a conversation about their children and become friends. Deborah lends Toby a book about a trolley strike in the 1920s, which she reads sporadically and then puts aside and forgets. Twenty years later, after Deborah is killed in a car crash, the devastated Toby discovers that sculptress Berry Cooper, who features prominently in the book, is living nearby. Prompted to rediscover the book, Toby finally finishes it, thus coming to terms with Deborah's death. The novel unfolds in jerky fits and starts at ten-year intervals, and the parallel story lines interweave, showing how the past is inextricably linked to the present. The characters are well drawn and realistic, the language and culture vivid. A worthwhile follow-up to Mattison's 1997 hit story collection, Men Giving Money, Women Yelling.--Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Watch Hill Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

{A} powerfully told story, likely to become for the Atlanta child murders what Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five became for the firebombing of Dresden... These Bones is a brave achievement.
— Time Out: New York

John Freeman

Alice Mattison is a pro at creating profound connections between unlikely people, places and now, even books...a serious, significant examination of the institution of friendship.
— Time Out: New York

Daphne Uviller

Mattison's third novel (after Hilda and Pearl, 1995, etc.) is actually a successful graft of two tales: one written by a 1920s feminist and radical, the other about the woman who reads that "first book" in the late 20th century. While Deborah Laidlaw and another mother, Toby Ruben, look after their children in the park, Deborah lends Toby a memoir, Trolley Girl, recounting the Lipkin sisters' involvement in a 1921 trolley strike. Miriam Lipkin writes of her two sisters; Jessie, a young radical determined to support the strike, participates in protests and stands in contrast to quiet, cheerful Sarah, who is killed in a trolley collision. Later, Jessie is implicated in what is seen as a murder, and though she's acquitted, she's alienated forever from her family. Miriam, meanwhile, changed her name to Berry Cooper and enjoyed modest success as a sculptor. The "second book" deals with difficult, sometimes unpleasant people. Toby describes her friendship with Deborah from the '70s to the present, often behaving like a younger, respectful sister toward her. When she meets Deborah's husband, Jeremiah, in a drawing class, he tells Toby of Berry Cooper's career. After Deborah dies in an auto accident, Toby cautiously returns to the memoir she'd abandoned long ago. Berry then enters Toby's real life when her grown-up son Peter becomes a care-giver to the now-elderly artist, and Toby takes over when Peter disappears. Still grieving for Deborah, Toby also has to confront the possible loss of her son. It's through this ordeal that Berry serves as an oracular, nonsensical/wise guide. She's a wonderful creation, and Mattison writes her as a quirky, unpredictable spirit, simultaneously maintainingToby's grave meditations on her best friend's death. A rich, textured exploration of misfortune and its consequences: a book that will reward any reader willing to go slowly and absorb its course.

Kirkus Reviews