Micro Review 53

 

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray (Penguin Random House)

This was a book I got for Christmas after seeing it mentioned in lots of different places - I mean a book about a librarian specialising in rare, antiquarian books was always going to pique my curiosity!

The book is the story of J. P. Morgan's private librarian and how between them they created one of the most interesting private collections of books (and art) and then made them accessible to the public.

While this story is fascinating in itself there is another strand to the story in that Belle, the librarian, is in fact passing as white due to her family's light skin tone. Her father was the first Black graduate from Harvard and was very prominent in the integration movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In having a main character that crossed into both communities allowed a lot of history to be told without ever descending into bald exposition. I found it profoundly sad that society has not progressed as much in the past 100 years as we'd like to think as many of the events could (and probably do) still happening today.

While I really enjoyed the novel and how all of the story wove together I did find myself wishing that it was a little more of a biography with slightly less of the imaginings of Belle's romantic entanglements. I will now be looking out for other books about her and her achievements.

One thing I did like about the book was the openness of Marie Benedict as she realised that by being a white author she couldn't authentically tell Belle's story and so worked with Victoria Christopher Murray to create a more rounded book. This co-authorship worked wonderfully and at no point could I pick out one voice from the other - it was just a good book.

In that way that sometimes happens the theme of 'passing' has cropped up in a few other things I've come across recently, most noticeably in the film Passing which is nominated for several BAFTAs next month and I do recommend both the film and The Personal Librarian for an insight into pre-WW2 New York society.