Public Library and Other Stories

by Ali Smith (Author, Narrator)

A richly inventive new collection of stories from Ali Smith, author of How to be both, winner of the Baileys Women's Prize and the Costa Novel Award and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Why are books so very powerful?

What do the books we've read over our lives - our own personal libraries - make of us?

What does the unravelling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us?

The stories in Ali Smith's new collection are about what we do with books and what they do with us: how they travel with us; how they shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser and ageless all at once; how they remind us to pay attention to the world we make.

Public libraries are places of joy, freedom, community and discovery - and right now they are under threat from funding cuts and widespread closures across the UK and further afield. With this brilliantly inventive collection, Ali Smith joins the campaign to save our public libraries and celebrate their true place in our culture and history.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Books About Books, Contemporary, Essays, Audiobook, British Literature

5 pages, Audiobook

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Ali Smith is a writer, born in Inverness, Scotland, to working-class parents. She was raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge. She studied at Aberdeen, and then at Cambridge, for a Ph.D. that was never finished. In a 2004 interview with writing magazine Mslexia, she talked briefly about the difficulty of becoming ill with chronic fatigue syndrome for a year and how it forced her to give up her job as a lecturer at University of Strathclyde to focus on what she really wanted to do: writing. She has been with her partner Sarah Wood for 17 years and dedicates all her books to her.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Public libraries allow us to explore the self or the desired self in many forms.’

There are few things I love more than the public library. Since I was a child libraries have always been special to me, instilling in me a love of reading but also shaping the course of my life. In middle school I took a class, “Librarian Aide” and spent my first hour of the day working in the school library. I loved it so much the librarian kept me on for a second semester but apparently one hour a day in the library was not enough for me because now, years later, I spend 40 hours a week in one. I’m here right now typing this between reference questions. Libraries are such an essential part of society, archiving knowledge and putting our efforts towards reducing barriers to information access for all (everyone should go fines-free, for the record), but there’s something else that is incredible about libraries that make it a nearly sacrosanct space. Libraries are a communal place you can be without having to spend money and are some of the only spaces where people from every social class all mix together. And these spaces are always evolving, finding new ways to provide for and serve their communities to help everyone learn and grow in ever expanding ways.

‘Browse, borrow, request, renew–lovely words to me.
A library card in your hand is your democracy.’
Jackie Kay, from Dear Library

Libraries are important to Ali Smith as well, and Public Library and Other Stories becomes a plea to pay attention to, appreciate, and fight for public libraries. The project came together in response to the UK slashing library budgets which saw around 1000 libraries disappearing from 2010-2015, and these book serves as an excellent reminder of the importance of libraries and the power books and learning have in our lives. Smith’s signature charm and wit comes through each of the twelve stories and while libraries are never mentioned or depicted in them, the love of words, learning and impact of communication and community flood every page.

The connecting thread here, however, are the interludes between tales where Smith has gathered reflections from her friends on what libraries mean to them. It becomes a gorgeous and moving tribute to the essential institution with stirring passages from authors like Miriam Toews, Kamila Shamsie, or Helen Oyeyemi describing the interlibrary loan system as making libraries a ‘live and benevolent organism’ (I put three years of my life towards ILL services, so I was pleased to see it get a specific mention). We see the power of libraries, such as when Sophie Mayer notes that a library card was once used as a weapon against evil in an episide of Buffy the Vampire Slayer . Libraries give us strength.

‘Libraries save the world. A lot, but outside the narrative mode of heroism: through contemplative action, anonymously and collectively. For me, the public library is the ideal model of society, the best possible shared space, a community of consent—an anarcho-cyndicalist collective where each person is pursuing their own aim….through the best possible medium of the transmission of ideas, feelings and knowledge: the book.’

Many speak of warm memories around books and how librarians touched their hearts, many speak of the ways libraries are democracy in action, such as Kate Atkinson who tells us libraries are ‘a free space, a democratic space,’ while Kate’s daughter, Helen remarks that public library means ‘communal.’ These short testimonies help demonstrate what translator Anton Hur meant when he was recently quoted as saying ‘libraries are not just archives of books and digital media, they are the archives of our very communities, of our civilization.’ This is important to bear in mind in times such as these where, especially in the United States, there is a small but dangerous push against the right to read showing up as book bannings and attacks on libraries and other public institutions (I wrote about it extensively HERE), and while Public Library is a few years old and UK focused, it is just as relevant to hear today.

‘Words were stories in themselves.’

Ali Smith is always quite the wordsmith and the language here is as playful as it is a theme unto itself amongst the stories. While the stories aren’t library focused, it feels like they form their own personal lending library of stories and recommendations with many writers being crucial to the narratives. The poems of Wilfred Owen become a talking point for a woman and her deceased father, reading Katherine Mansfield allows one character to better appreciate their spouse and the author herself, and D.H. Lawrence figures in multiple stories, one involving a potential switch-up of his ashes that gets sidelined by a story of credit card fraud (I love a good paperwork drama and what would a book on libraries be without discussion of identification). A key moment in the stories is when a narrator finds themselves in a park where Mary and Percy Shelley once stood and where the narrator once visited with a former love showing how ‘endless stories, all crossing across each other,’ come alive in the lives of readers. Though perhaps a favorite theme was all the references to, and frustrations with the faceless and joyless bureaucracy of AI or other computer-based services showing how the flesh-and-blood expertise of library staff can never be replaced by an algorithm.

‘Fiction…is impossible but enables us to reach what is relatively truth.’

A brief but lovely collection, Public Library and Other Stories is a moving and playful read to warm any book lovers heart. Smith mixes activism with whimsical narratives quite effectively in all her works and these brief tales and testimonies are a delight.

4.5/5

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

An immersive collection exploring the power of books, writers, readers, and public libraries. The first-person stories are independent, but share a love of wordplay, etymology, and famous authors, the latter often actively participating in the stories. All can be launchpads for a deep-dive into the words, works, writers, and ideas mentioned. Some are addressed to “you”, and although I assume most of the narrators are versions of Smith, at least one is definitely male. Many are stream-of-consciousness musings and although I don’t get on with audiobooks, I think Smith's style might work better in a more conversational medium.

While working on the stories, Smith asked people about public libraries and she interleaves what they said with her own stories. They echo each other in the importance of and threat to public libraries, and the sequence of their titles summarise those points as a poem:

Library
that beautiful new build
opened by mark twain
a clean, well-lighted place
the ideal model of society
soon to be sold
put a price on that
on bleak house road
curve tracing
the library sunlight
the making of me
the infinite possibilities

Image: Photo of two small children reading in a public library - slightly before my time (Source)

The structure of this reminded me of Winterson's Christmas Days (my review HERE).


Individual stories and essays - no spoilers


z. Library
Smith and her editor are attracted by the carved letters above a door saying “LIBRARY”, only to find it is now a small private members’ club.

1. Last
“Words were stories in themselves.”
The joys of the Tube (London’s subway). It opens with a series of (deliberate) clichés about the end of the line as the narrator reflects on her journey to the last stop on the last train of the evening, and wordplay related to that.
“If we find you trespassing you will be fined.”
She notices something amiss, and then flip-flops between action and more contemplation about the meaning of words. There are hints of ennui in her own life, but much of the story is comical.

that beautiful new build
The life-changing importance - and opportunity for independence - of a public library to a bookish child, compounded by the excitement of shiny new premises.

2. Good voice
“Everything’s image these days and I have a feeling we’re getting further and further away from human voices.”
A German linguist goes to PoW camps to record different accents, which links to the narrator’s memories of their shell-shocked/PTSD father, and readings of WW1 poets, including Wilfred Owen and Dulce Et Decorum Est, juxtaposed with the lyrics of a bluegrass song, Red Sails in the Sunset.

opened by mark twain
“Because libraries have always been part of any civilized society, they are not negotiable. They are part of our inheritance.”
Mark Twain really did open the Kensal Rise library in London in 1910. The council closed it in 2011 and sold it to a property developer, but it’s currently an independent library open two days a week.


Image: Photo of campaign to save Kensal Rise library (Source)

3. The beholder
“One day I would end up half in love with easeful sleep. You see that? the unexpected words easeful just slipping itself in like into a warm clean bed next to the word sleep. Easeful.”
More contemplative wordplay, this time from a narrator who has been given three months’ of antidepressants, with little advice, and doesn’t take them anyway. Apparently, Milton liked wordplay and coined, or at least, popularised, words including fragrance, gloom, lovelorn, and padlock. The mystical bodily transformation reminded me of AS Byatt's The Stone Woman (see my review HERE).
“Every rose opens into a layering of itself, a dense-packed grandeur that holds until it spills.”

a clean, well-lighted place
Like the eponymous place in Hemingway’s short story of the same name (see my review HERE), public libraries are accessible to all ages and social class. Even better, you need not spend any money to use the library. And a library is more than just books: it’s a community.

4. The poet
“That lassie lives in figures of speech.”
Modern parallels with the Scottish poet, Olive Fraser, and some of her poems.

the ideal model of society
“The best possible shared space, a community of consent - an anarcho-syndicalist collective where each person is pursuing their own aim… through the best possible medium of the transmission of ideas.”
Buffy the vampire slayer used a library card as a weapon, and David Tennant’s Dr Who said, “You want weapons? We're in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room's the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!” Smith only mentions the former.

5. The human claim
A two-pronged tale of battling a credit card company about a fraudulent transaction with Lufthansa and trying to find out what happened to DH Lawrence’s ashes: whether what Frieda buried in New Mexico, where she was later laid to rest, were really what she thought.

soon to be sold
Euphemisms: councils say they’re divesting, rather than closing libraries, and public libraries become community libraries, the latter sounding OK until you realise it means barely-funded and staffed entirely by volunteers. The stated scale of funding cuts and closures in recent years is truly shocking.

6. The ex-wife
This required more careful reading than some of the previous stories, but repaid the effort. The narrator splits from their partner when the partner’s bookishness becomes a damaging obsession. Hard to imagine? She gives examples. Jealousy is the underlying emotion. Katherine Mansfield is the prime focus, and there are many quotes from her journals. After the split, the narrator develops a passion for Mansfield for the most incredible reason.
“The way it was impossible haunted me.”
By delightful serendipity, I have just read another metafictional, fantastical homage to Katherine Mansfield. See my review of Francis King’s story, A Scent of Mimosa, HERE.

put a price on that
“Libraries can definitely lead you astray in the best possible way.”
The thrill and embarrassment of reading taboo things, and memories of a rural travelling library.
“Choosing books each week was like laying out the dreams I would have.”

7. The art of elsewhere
This opens with reminiscences of recent travels to elsewhere, switches to a childhood friend whose father was “elsewhere” (in prison) and who uses Kipling’s poem If as a ruse to be elsewhere, before the narrative returns to a sequence of sayings and metaphors for a Utopian sort of elsewhere.

on bleak house road
People need places to escape to. The British Council library in Karachi was a haven. It’s closed.

8. After life
A more comical and surreal story than the others, told by a man. He and his family return from holiday to discover the local newspaper has reported him as dead. He tells them he’s not, goes back to work, has a party, laughter, and celebration all round. Ten years later, it happens again, but he’s not so amused second time round. The truth of the matter is obscure, at least to me.

curve tracing
Looking at old books in the library of Newnham College, Cambridge (not strictly a public library).

9. The definite article
“One of those days in January that spring sends ahead of itself.”
Emerging from the Underground to go to an urgent and important meeting, the narrator gets something in her eye. She ends up walking around the park, really observing everything and everyone in great detail, and reminiscing about a birthday treat in the park. It had me thinking of Wordsworth’s Daffodils, but has Smith thinking of Cupid being stung by a bee in Robert Herrick’s translation of Anacreon’s poem, The Wounded Cupid, and of the stories of many famous writers who criss-crossed the park.


Image: Daffodils in a park, in sunlight - but there’s so much more to see when you really look (Source)

the library sunlight
Peaceful sleep in a sunlit library.

10. Grass
Stuck in a traffic jam, she finds a book destined for a charity shop. She has no recollection of it, but sees notes made by her younger self. It’s Selected Poems of Herrick (a poem of whose featured in “The definite article”, above), particularly the poem, Upon a Child: an Epitaph. Seeing “leafy gallantry” in another poem reminds her of when a child came to her father’s small electrical shop and tried to buy a toaster with twigs and bluebells.

the making of me
“The public library network definitely strikes me as some sort of live and benevolent organism.”

11. Say I won't be there
The narrator tells “you” of a recurring dream involving Dusty Springfield having her photograph taken in a graveyard, and that’s more like a 1960s novel than a film. The two of them argue about the dream, and then there’s another level of story inside that.

the infinite possibilities
Public libraries are more than just books: computers that are free to use, children’s activities, and advice.

12. And so on
Another postmodernish tale with stories within stories. It’s themed around death and starts with a woman (who died young soon after) telling the narrator she dreamed she was an artwork being stolen. The narrator imagines if this woman really had been an artwork and what she’d do to the thief, including telling them stories as distraction.



Libraries in my life

I’m fortunate that I’ve always had my own books to cherish, but borrowing from public libraries has been important too.

Growing up in a small village, we mainly used the travelling library: a small bus of bookshelves that came once a week, to both ends of the village. It was a magical place that could transport me anywhere - and one day, it literally did: against all the rules, but with my mother’s permission, the librarian let me stay on to the second stop in the village!


Image: Interior of a mobile library in 1975, like the one I used (Source)

My secondary school had a library that nurtured reading for pleasure, as well as having books directly related to the curriculum. A member of staff was in charge, but in my penultimate year I was pleased to be appointed one of a handful of pupil librarians.

At university, I always preferred to work in the library, rather than my study-bedroom: I love being in the presence of books, but also, I’ve always valued home and work being separate places.

As an adult, I rarely borrowed books from the public library, but sometimes used it as a quieter place to read or work than a coffee shop - and without the obligation to buy coffee.

Now, while I take a break from working, I'm a volunteer librarian at a nearby community library. It's way better than the council-funded library in my own town, both in terms of book stock and community outreach. Fabulous. But the fact that fewer than half the “public” libraries in my fairly affluent county are still funded by the council, is awful (they just provide the IT system for inter-library loans).

Cyber threat

It’s not just funding cuts that threaten public libraries. In October 2023, the British Library suffered ransomware cyberattack. They didn’t pay. Catalogues, ordering systems, and the website were affected, and personal data sold on the dark web. At the time of writing (mid Jan 2024), much of the online collection is still offline. Researchers with academic and visa deadlines are struggling. Authors are unlikely to get their annual Public Lending payments for this tax year, because the BL manages the system. Read more here.


Image: Panoramic photo of the British Library Reading Room in 2006 by Diliff (Source)


Why public libraries matter

For a fantastical slant, see Alix E Harrow's short story, A Witch’s Guide to Escape, which I reviewed HERE.

Tom Gauld also nails it in this comic strip:

(Source)
"The shocking truth of what's going on in our public libraries!"
1. "Teens prescribed mind-altering experiences!" (A librarian picking out a book they might like.)
2. "Children indoctrinated from an early age!" (Being read to, by a poster saying "Reading is fun".)
3. "Free samples distributed to promote addiction!" (Borrower being invited back soon.)
4. "Groups gather by night to study arcane texts!" (Going to Ulysses book group.)

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

As other reviewers have noted, there is no story called "Public library" in this collection. Yet every story is prefaced by comments about public libraries that together could be taken as a 'story' called "Public library." These prefaces consist of stories that others told Ali Smith of past library experiences, reminiscences that become mixed with warnings of what will be lost due to the impending demise of public library systems in Great Britain. I came to feel that the 'missing' "Public library" story is the story of what will be lacking in society and from our lives if libraries become historical fiction.

The short stories that follow these interspersed prefaces aren't blatantly about libraries, but about our relationships with literature, authors, physical books, other media, each other, and even public parks (something else that's disappearing): All pure Ali Smith, with her characteristic style, including characters that are almost all nameless, mostly gender unknown, as if why should that matter.

I have my own public library story from when I was a child (more a general feeling of multiple visits), the look of the shelves as I scanned them, the feel of the books as I perused them, my graduation from J (Juvenile) to Y (Youth); and a public library story from when I was a young mother with two young children, another graduation for me, yet a commencement too, as we sat on the floor before the low shelves of books labeled E (Easy).

We all have -- or should have -- our own public library story.

Reread (October 12, 2020) for a buddy read with Howard.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Four hundred libraries in the UK are in danger of closing. Although I live in the USA, I have worked at my local library for almost twenty years, so this collection was a big draw for me. Of course she doesn't make it easy, these stories are challenging, take work to meander through, she doesn't believe in the linear format. They start out one way, meander towards something different before finding their way back. They are original, strange but all have to do with words, their meanings, poetry, music, love of reading, listening to words, languages etc. A variety of stories, but my three favorites were the first, a story called Last, The Poet and the story, Ex-wife which shows a man who doesn't understand his wife's love of books, reading and knowledge but comes to a better understanding when he reads Mansfield. But my favorite parts were those interspersed between stories when different authors, such as Kate Atkinson, recalls their early love of libraries and what libraries mean to them.

So a mixed bag, but maybe one to wander through when you are in the mood for a challenging read, a different type of story.

ARC from publisher.

[Esil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never read anything by Ali Smith, so I feel like I had to spend some time adjusting my brain to her writing, to her whimsical thought processes. Once I did, Public Library and Other stories really worked for me. This collection of stories is held together by Smith's love of libraries, books and words. Between each story, Smith recounts impressions she has collected from others about the role public libraries have played in their lives -- including an odd anecdote by Miriam Toews about an experience in a library in Toronto. The stories themselves don't fall into any kind of easy categorization. Each of the stories is short, non linear, impressionistic, often more poetry than fiction. I found myself loving sentences, paragraphs, shifts in narratives, references to books and authors, and her playfulness with words more than I liked the individual stories. But it all amounted to an experience I really appreciated -- some smiles, some sentences and passages I had to read out loud to my husband, some doubling back to make sure she had really written what I thought I just read, and some doubling back because the sentence was so delicious.

And how could one not love Smith's ode to libraries, which she says are closing at an epidemic rate in the UK. I was brought back to many of the libraries I've spent time in throughout my life. I recalled the poorly stocked library of my childhood where finding a book I wanted to read was a bit like finding a rare truffle. I appreciated the awesome abundance I discovered in the library system in Toronto when I moved here 25 years ago, and found myself within walking distance of several branches of the library -- as a student with little money, I loved spending time in those libraries. And I remembered academic libraries and other libraries in communities I have lived in and traveled to over the years -- libraries always there as a beacon, an anchor and a refuge.

This is not a book for everyone, but definitely a book for those who like whimsical writing, don't mind meandering thoughts and emotions, and who will melt as I did as each of Smith's contributors recounts their personal relationships with libraries. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 3 out of 5]

A celebration of Public Libraries....
......a place where people can go and just 'be'. People of all ages.

"It doesn't have to be educational. It doesn't matter who you are or what you were doing. Young or old. Rich are homeless. It doesn't matter.
You just go there.
So it's not about Books anymore? I said. Or it's more than books?
It maybe always was, Helen said.
In that books have always been people? I said.
Well, of course. But there was a culture that encouraged us, and now it doesn't exist, Kate said.
I bought very few books when the girls were young.
We went to the library. And nobody bought books when I was young either. I went to the library. It was what we did, Helen said. It was a habit, a ritual. You borrowed it, you read it, you brought it back and chose something else, and someone else read whatever you read after and before you. It was communal". That's what public library means:
something communal.

Ali Smith is defending the library - taking a stand for the difference they make in our lives. Ali tells her story/stories-- Other citizens were telling theirs [for me, this is when this overall book is strong- well had my full attention]...but the stories themselves a mix -- some were odd & quirky -- others just didn't interest me.

There are twelve stories --- celebrating books - their power - and the power of words!
I especially liked when she shared about the richness of what a word could mean for her.....( it's history of the word...and how the same word changed to mean something very different in her lifetime) --- but overall - the 'entire' book is an odd structure-
a book I appreciate it's purpose more than I actually enjoyed.

However ... Ali Smith did accomplish one thing by having me read this book... she can count on me being an advocate for our Public Libraries!

Thanks You Knopf Publishing, Netgalley, and Ali Smith

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ali Smith is always interesting, engaging, passionate and entertaining. The unifying theme of this collection is libraries, why they still matter and why we should fight for their survival. It consists of stories interleaved with thoughts garnered from various writers and other friends about their experiences of libraries. Smith's own stories are fascinating - often light on conventional plot but full of intriguing insights and connections, largely about the lives of other writers and poets, but also about the nature of reading and learning, and how the seeds of knowledge and memory can be planted in the most hostile of surroundings. I was almost tempted to use the word rambling, but there is nothing random about the way Ali Smith arranges her thoughts.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved everything about this collection of short stories, from its cover image (a film still from Godard's 1967 film, La Chinoise), to the twelve individual stories, each a luminous gem. Ali Smith believes we are what we read, and anyone who reads Ali Smith will identify with her passion for words, literature, language, libraries, and traveling out of everyday life to unexpected places through short stories. Highly recommended, and an ideal introduction for anyone new to Ali Smith.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the best review on this book go to S. Penkevich’s: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... I picked up this book because of him.

I love libraries. I had the wonderful opportunity to facilitate and coordinate programs for my local library for 12 years after I retired from teaching college.

And…In this instance, it is wonderful to read a book that celebrates libraries and reminds us how important they are to our communities.

With…A collection of clever short stories that are linked by a love of language, literature, and of course, strong important statements about the importance of our libraries.

Libraries give us the freedom and joy of browsing, roaming and finding books that we didn’t even realize we wanted to read.

And…Through Smith we find this important defense of them.

Because…Books, libraries, writers, words – these are the subjects she tackles.

As well as…Brilliantly connecting us to the importance of reading through her stories.

And…Her friends provide their own messages as to what libraries meant to them interspersed among the pages.

Which…Allows readers to be reminded of this vast public institution provided so generously to us, and why we would want to continue to protect them. No matter what side of the world we are on.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of short stories, and reminiscences about what libraries mean to various people, is both an enjoyable read and an important reminder of how library services are being eroded. I am, by any definition, a bookworm and I have also been a librarian, so obviously this book will strike a chord with me. Although, in this time of financial austerity, cuts need to be made, it is obvious that libraries – once lost – will not return. Yes, some can be run by enthusiastic volunteers, but this is a limited service and results in a lack of funding. In the borough of London where I live, one of our local libraries remained open (so far) by the determined efforts of many to simply refuse to let it be taken away – with sits ins and demonstrations by local authors as well as readers. It is a fact that libraries are most useful to the most vulnerable in our society; the children who need somewhere quiet to do homework, the elderly, mothers with young children. These are not the most powerful voices and it is our challenge to make sure their voices are heard.

Ali Smith stories in this collection are not just about the joy of reading, but they contrast the everyday (meetings, trips on trains, concerns over a fraudulent credit card transaction) with the meaning of words, what things are worth, poetry, history, language and the feeling of escape that literature can bring to our lives. Indeed, many of those interviewed about what libraries mean, or have meant, to them, mention that is was often a place to escape to, a place of safety and part of their community. The importance of constants in my own children’s life – the joy of the Summer Reading Challenge, the baby rhyme time sessions they went to as babies, the friends I have made through libraries, all mean that they are important to me too. Smith also mentions many famous authors in her stories; Elizabeth Bowen, D H Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Dodie Smith and Sylvia Plath haunt these pages, as their words live in our imaginations and on the shelves of the libraries we should do everything to save. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, to review.

[Bianca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Autumn and Winter by Ali Smith.
I've had this for a while, I'm glad I finally got around to finishing it.

This collection of stories is quite eclectic. The stories are interspersed with different people's thoughts on the role the libraries played and still play in their lives. Apparently, the number of UK library closures is staggering. It made me think about the libraries in my area - they've all undergone major renovations and upgrades, so I guess, we are lucky in Perth, Western Australia.

Smith's talent shines through each and every story, even in the more convoluted ones. Those familiar with her writing won't be surprised. The newbies will get a taste of her abilities and originality.

[Paul Secor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Ali Smith book which shows her love of words - their meanings, derivations, and sounds.

The stories in Public Libraries and Other Stories are full of things/subjects: a disabled woman trapped on a train, Katherine Mansfield, families - especially fathers, credit card identity theft, searching for "elsewhere", D.H. Lawrence's ashes, Dusty Springfield, Olive Fraser, an obscure (to me when I read the story, anyway, though she won't be any longer) Scottish poet - http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org...., and other wonderful things.
Between the stories are commentaries on public libraries in the U.K by friends and colleagues of Ali Smith, which are fascinating, interesting (and sometimes moving) in their own right (write) - thanks, J.L.

And always there is Ali Smith's love of words.

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the main things that struck me about Public Library is that nothing in it is superfluous. Every word, every detail, is there for a reason, and every time I finished a story I had a strong feeling that if I went back and really studied it, I'd find all sorts of connections on all sorts of levels. Every story was like a poem in that way, except that instead of 20 lines you had 10-20 pages, so each one was its own bright immersive world of interconnectedness. This might make it sound overly ponderous or effortful, but Public Library wasn't weighed down by description or self-importance—it was nimble and lively and openhearted and delightful and completely unique.

If I had one complaint it would be that I didn't love the little essays about libraries between each story. I mean, they were nice to read, and I understand that in some ways they were the whole point. But they just interrupted the dazzle of the fiction in a way that didn't quite work for me. Still, I can't argue with the intention behind them, and they won't stop me from giving this five stars. I'll be surprised if I read a better story collection this year, or one that I enjoy more.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second line in this collection immediately invited me in: “Here’s a true story. Simon, my editor, and I had been meeting to talk about how to put together this book you’re reading right now.” Well, she’s talking to me, so my ears perk up. And so she tells me about how her and Simon came across a building with a big sign — “LIBRARY” — but it didn’t look like a library. Needs to be explored then, doesn’t it. So in they go, and it’s not a library, it’s a name for a private club and wellness hub (ew). This is true, I googled it: http://www.lib-rary.com/about/ It’s on St. Martin’s Lane in Covent Garden. Their logo shows their name as: LIBRARY I think there are a lot of public libraries throughout England that could use that sign now.

Each of the sections/stores has a title. But none of them is called “Public Library”, the title of the book. While she was preparing this book, she was asking friends and strangers for their Library stories. The UK’s public libraries are fading, shrinking and disappearing, thanks to the very government that should be celebrating and expanding them. Sandwiched between each story are these little essay-ettes, a little bit of non-fiction/essay/memoir, mixed with fiction. Like a library, I guess.

The stories touch on the lives of books, of readers, of authors. It is another celebration of words by this wonderful writer, and it was a delight to read.
And wouldn't it be fitting if the copy you read is one that you check out of the library?

[Ulysse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes me want to pull my dictionary off the shelf and make love to it.

[Emily B]

DNF - I found the style of writing difficult and
had to keep re reading sentences. I also didn’t find the short stories particularly interesting and so stopped forcing myself to read it after around 20%

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scattered Pages

Public Library. That's "Public Library" with a strikeout through it, because the motivation behind Ali Smith's collection is to protest a recent spate of library closures in Great Britain that shows no sign of stopping. She herself has contributed ten stories, loosely connected by the themes of writing and reading. In between are short letters from her friends (names like Kate Atkinson, Helen Oyeyemi, and Kamila Shamsie) about the importance of libraries in their childhoods. Brief though these are, some of them are very good. Her partner Sarah Wood writes of a children's library that had…

…a scheme where you got points for taking out books and when you reached a certain number of points the prize was that you got to help the librarian tidy up the shelves. We all wanted to do that.

Shades of Tom Sawyer! Or this, which I think I can quote complete:

    Miriam Toews told me about how once, a couple of years ago, when she will sitting reading at a desk in Toronto's public library, she saw her own mother come in and sit down in one of the sunlit seats by the windows. Her mother, without noticing her daughter there, settled down, stretched out and fell asleep.
    She sat where she was and watched her mother sleep.
    A library assistant approached her mother. She saw this assistant reach out a tentative hand and give her mother a shake.
    Her mother didn't wake up.
    The assistant stepped back, stood as if thinking about it for a moment, then left her mother sleeping in the library sunlight.

But what about Ali Smith's actual stories? I don't think I have read any short fiction from her before, only the novels How to Be Both and The Accidental, both of which I enjoyed a lot, so I didn't know what to expect. Only these didn't seem to be normal stories, so much as scattered pages of a memoir about the writing life, almost all in the first person. Of course, I know that the "I" in the story is not necessarily I, Ali Smith, the writer; indeed there were one or two where clearly the I was male. But there is a kind of loose consistency between the various I's: born in Inverness, educated at Cambridge, partnered then separated, possibly partnered again.

And there is a consistent looseness in the stories also: they tend to start in one place, take detours, and end somewhere rather different, perhaps with a long quotation from someone else's work. So "The Poet," a life-story of the Scots poet Olive Fraser (the only piece written in the third person) ends with a brief anthology of her poems. Two others, "The Definite Article" and "Grass," end with poems by Robert Herrick. The title character in "The Ex-Wife," a rather moving story about the break-up of a relationship, turns out to be a jocular reference to Katharine Mansfield. She appears in another story too, "The Human Claim," in which a struggle with Barclaycard over a stolen identity case bumps into a piece about Mansfield's friend D. H. Lawrence, and his checkered history in Britain:

I'd been reading him since I was sixteen, when I chose a dual copy of St. Mawr / The Virgin and the Gypsy for a school prize, mostly because I knew if would discomfit the Provost and his wife, who annually gave out the prizes; Lawrence was still reasonably notorious in Inverness in the 1970s. (It makes me laugh even now that the prize sticker inside my paperback says I'm being awarded for Oral French.)

Then there is her interest in language. "Last," a story about a rescuing a wheelchair-bound woman marooned on a train that has been shunted into a siding, is constantly interrupted by musings on the changing meanings of words. "Good Voice" starts as a piece about disappearing regional accents, then turns into a stream-of-consciousness cocktail of phrases from WW1 poetry. "And So On," a commissioned piece for a collection on the theme of death, contains an amusing anecdote about a trip to Greece with a friend who kept getting strange looks for people when she asked the way to the sea. If modern Greek is anything like the ancient variety, it would be easy to understand how the friend might confuse "thalassa," the word for sea, with "thanatos," the word for death.

This is not a five-star book; it is too quirky and insubstantial. I have been hesitating between three stars and four. But I am rounding up because of the few moments when Smith manages to touch a very personal nerve. Another anecdote in "And So On" is about a dying woman who hires actors to spend Christmas and the New Year with her—a silly concept, perhaps, but it has a surprisingly moving ending. Or in "Grass," when twenty-five years ago a child came into her father's appliance shop laden with freshly picked wildflowers, asking to buy a toaster. She takes one down from a shelf and the child puts some of the flowers carefully on the counter as though bargaining for the price. Of course she tells him that you cannot buy a toaster with flowers, which is poignant enough. But what really got to me was the guilt she feels for years after this. Which gets her on to Herrick:

He is most famous, it says here, for his poems about girls, love, spring, flowers. Fair daffodils, we weep to see / ye haste away so soon. Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows / That liquefaction of her clothes. How Roses Came Red. To a Bed of Tulips. To Violets. To Meadows. To Primroses Filled with Morning Dew. To Daisies, Not to Shut so Soon.

And then the way she ends:

I'd fill every toaster that ever stopped working, got thrown out, got buried in landfill. I'd fill all their slots with wild colours and flowerheads. I'd fill that old shop with the smell of this earth.

=======

All of which had made me think about my own library experiences as a child in Northern Ireland. I'm afraid they don't echo the welcoming sentiments of Smith's book. This was 1950, an austere period in a Calvinist town that chained the swings in the park on the Sabbath. The Carnegie Free Library was a grim building with tiled floors that smelled of disinfectant; it was a temple to the Dewey Decimal System and Serious Knowledge. My love of reading came from a storefront subscription library where my mother got mysteries and romances and I read the collected works of Enid Blyton and Richmal Crompton. But the Carnegie people did come to my aid in my troubled teens, when they reluctantly dug out the new Kinsey Report and allowed me to read it Under Strict Supervision. And later, when I developed a passion for Thomas Mann, and they turned out to have the four-volume set of Joseph and His Brothers. No warm fuzzies in this library, but certainly useful!

Thanks to Amazon Vine for a review copy.

[JimZ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love libraries.

I have fond memories of the library when growing up. Getting my library card — having freedom to pick and choose, going to the “adult” section. The quiet — I really liked the quiet. It was a rule, but I guess people could break the rule…but they didn’t. So, I equate a library with silence.

Overall, I did not like this collection of short stories, and I say this sadly. None of the stories were about libraries. I should note that each of the stories had an intro of sorts, and I appreciated those. In those intros, Ali Smith quoted some people (a number of them were friends and/or fellow writers) and they all had good memories of the library when growing up and shared their memories. A number of them, including Ali Smith herself, also were concerned with the shrinking budgets and the closing of libraries in this day and age. Where I live that does not appear to be on the horizon — there seems to be strong support for libraries. I was just there yesterday, at the local branch, and this is where I got this book. Smith quoted Kate Atkinson’s (a well-known UK author of fiction) daughter, Helen Clyne and I liked it:
• Her daughter, Helen Clyne interrupted to say that the important thing about the notion of a public library now is that it’s the one place you can just turn up to, a free space, a democratic space, where anyone can go and be there with other people, and you don’t need money —It was what we did, Helen said. It was a habit, a ritual. You borrowed it, you read it, you brought it back and chose something else, and someone else read whatever you read after and before you. It was communal. That’s what public library means: something communal.

I do not know how to characterize the short stories. I can tell you there was next-to-no action and no story line and nothing really happened in the stories. And it got to be so bad, for me, that I started doing DNFs and I hate doing that. But I just could not go on, because I did not understand what I was reading and I knew there were 3-5 more pages of the stuff that I was not having a good time reading, and I just bailed out. ☹

I should say that perhaps you should not take my word on this. In the front pages, different periodicals sung the praises of this collection: 14 independent entities and another one on the front cover (The Times [London]) and the 3 on the back cover (The Times Literary Supplement, Financial Times, The Guardian).

Here are my ratings of the stories:
• Last — 4 stars
• Good voice — 2.5 stars
• The beholder — 2 stars
• The port — 1.5 stars
• The human claim — 1.5 stars
• The ex-wife — DNF
• The art of elsewhere — 2 stars
• After life — 1 star
• The definite article — 2 stars
• Grass — 1 star
• Say I won’t be there — DNF
• And so on — DNF

Reviews (all rave about the collection):
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
• https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/bo...
• https://www.ft.com/content/4aebf180-7...
• https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...
• https://www.haggardandhalloo.com/2016...

[BrokenTune · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

I realized I could say anything to this person and she wouldn’t be able to hear; I realized that unless she could lip-read she’d not know what I was saying. I could ask her what had happened to her, why and how she was in a wheelchair. I could recite the whole of Kubla Khan by Coleridge, or tell her all about Theseus and Ariadne, and she’d have to listen, while not listening at all, obviously. It had the makings of the perfect relationship.
(from "Last")

I was looking forward to when this book was first published with all the expectations of a biased fan. It's probably the weakest of the books I have read by Smith (with the exception of an early collection of short stories called Free Love). Some of the stories (The Poet and The Beholder) in this collection were previously published in a different context in Shire, which focused on two writers who have had an influence on Smith in her student days.
And So On was previously published also (in the Guardian I think but might be wrong) and also made more sense as a standalone than as part of this collection.

The collection as a whole, feels a bit rushed. However, I think the feeling of urgency stems from the the underlying requirement to raise public awareness and support for libraries in a time of austerity measures, when libraries were one of the first victims to cuts in public spending. As Smith notes:
Just in the few weeks that I’ve been ordering and re-editing these twelve stories for this book, twenty-eight libraries across the UK have come under threat of closure or passing to volunteers. Fifteen mobile libraries have also come under this same threat. That makes forty-three – in a matter of weeks.

As a witness to other cuts that have affected people's access to information and public spaces in which to socialise, I have to agree with Smith's notion that this is an urgent issue that needs to be raised. Once libraries are closed, it is unlikely they will return.
And isn't it ironic, that only a few months later, the wake of the Brexit referendum would lead to public outcry over an identifiable lack of skills to process information or in some cases mis-information and lack of political education? (It's also fitting that it would lead to Smith's next book Autumn.)

In previous notes about Smith's writing, I have mentioned that she has a particular way of working and playing with words that is both engaging and magical. Or maybe it is magical the way it is engaging? In any case, I love the way she explores words and meaning.

The word last is a very versatile word. Among other more unexpected things – like the piece of metal shaped like a foot which a cobbler uses to make shoes – it can mean both finality and continuance, it can mean the last time, and something a lot more lasting than that.
(from "Last")

One of my favourite aspects of Smith's writing - apart from her magical way of playing with words - is that she is a master at recording personal responses to events, that she can tell about what is going on outside of a person's (or character's) life by describing the inner worlds - sometimes with a smirk:

I’d thought I knew quite a lot about Lawrence’s actual life. I’ve been reading him since I was sixteen, when I chose a dual copy of St Mawr / The Virgin and the Gypsy for a school prize, mostly because I knew it would discomfit the Provost and his wife, who annually gave out the prizes; Lawrence was still reasonably notorious in Inverness in the 1970s. (It makes me laugh even now that the prize sticker inside my paperback says I’m being awarded for Oral French.)
(from "The Human Claim")

....and sometimes with a level of rage:

Meanwhile, in my sleep, the freed-up me’s went wild. They spraypainted the doors and windows of the banks, urinated daintily on the little mirror-cameras on the cash machines. They emptied the machines, threw the money on to the pavements. They stole the fattened horses out of the abattoir fields and galloped them down the high streets of all the small towns. They ignored traffic lights. They waved to surveillance. They broke into all the call centres. They sneaked up and down the liftshafts, slipped into the systems. They randomly wiped people’s debts for fun. They replaced the automaton messages with birdsong. They whispered dissent, comfort, hilarity, love, sparkling fresh unscripted human responses into the ears of the people working for a pittance answering phones for businesses whose CEOs earned thousands of times more than their workforce. They flew inside aircraft fuselages and caused turbulence on every flight taken by everyone who ever ripped anyone else off. They replaced every music track on every fraudster’s phone, iPad or iPod with Sheena Easton singing Modern Girl. They marauded into porn shoots and made the girls and women laugh. They were tough and delicate. They were winged like the seeds of sycamores. There were hundreds of them. Soon there would be thousands. They spread like mushrooms. They spread like spores. There would be no stopping them.
(from "The Human Claim")

Irrespective of the shortcomings of Public Library and Other Stories, and even tho not all of the stories in this collection are memorable, I would recommend the collection on the strength of even one story alone: In And So On, Smith describes the loss of a friend who died too young. In this story she imagines her friend as a work of art who has been stolen by art thieves. This story, friends, epitomises why I love Smith's writing: it's quirky, it's emotionally raw, and it's pure genius.

And in some ways here I am doing exactly that, telling all this in the direction of my friend who died young and was a work of art, no: a work of life, though she died so roughly, and wherever those thieves are hiding her till they can sell her, they have to tape blankets over the windows because the light coming off her mind, even though she’s dead, gives away her whereabouts, and they have to keep pulling up and cutting back the flowers and tendrils and green stuff that persistently crack the stone of the floors of wherever they’ve got her.
(from And So On)

[Kristi Betts · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't often stop reading a book, especially when it is on a topic of which I am passionate, libraries. However this time I simply had to stop. I truly wanted to like this book. In fact I was so excited when I read the description I wanted to start reading it immediately. I felt the stories started with a public library connection then went off on a variety of tangents. At times I would read multiple pages and then have to go back to make sure I had not skipped pages.

Although others reviews and comments about this book are positive, I have to say this is just not the type of writing I enjoy reading. I truly wanted this book to be a collection of the positive impact libraries have had and can have on a community and its people. Sad, it did not cover this aspect of the title to the degree for which I was anticipating.

[Karen·]

I thought it only appropriate that this should be my first borrowing from the local public library. all credit to them, working under lockdown conditions and yet still providing a sterling service.

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ali Smith is a thought-provoking writer. I have read many of her works and each has left me with a profound understanding of not only my own experience but also of experiences I have never and perhaps will never understand through my own eyes. Many a situation I could not put into words has been put into words by her. In Public Library and Other Stories the theme of this short story collection is books and the libraries they come from and return to.

Why are books so very powerful? What do the books we’ve read over our lives—our libraries—make of us? What does the unravelling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us?

Smith looks to explore what we do with books but also what they do with us. We physically carry them with us, taking them to new places. No matter where we are, they shock us. They change us, challenge us, implore us to become better, to do better. They make us consider the world around us, the world within our heads, the world within our hearts.

Between these stories are conversations with writers and readers reflecting on the essential role that libraries have played in their lives. Public libraries have dwindled in the UK for some time now. What was commonplace for days out as a child are now buildings children, and others of all ages, do not have access to. For many, this is critical access to stories, books, the internet, and warmth. It is entertainment for children and safety for adults and vice versa. Each story, each personal anecdote, felt like Smith's need to make all understand just how vital public libraries are. Much like the written word, they are something to fight for, to use, to cherish.

[Eilonwy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3-1/2 stars rounded up

So, I walked into my public library, and there's this slender book called Public Library staring at me from the New Books shelf. How could I resist?

This is a very odd little book, consisting of a collection of short stories, all separated by reminiscences from various authors about their public libraries. The short stories are mainly "un-love" stories about death, middle age, and breaking up. Which makes them sound grim, but they aren't. Ali Smith's whimsical touch and wry humor brighten all of them, and a couple are cheerful. The library reminiscences are definitely love letters, many with a touch of sadness as the libraries have been closed as part of austerity measures.

I'd call this collection uneven, and yet I really enjoyed all of it. Definitely recommended to anyone who loves libraries and melancholy short stories.

[Jordan Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with all short story collections some were leaving me hooked some not so much but i'll let other people decide which

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

We’re getting to a point where a library isn’t a library anymore. As Ali Smith humorously discovers in the opening of her new book of short stories, a building in central London marked library is now more likely to be a private members’ club that is focused on lists of cocktails rather than sharing literature. Despite the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act in the UK which states local councils are under a legal obligation to provide library services, over ten percent of the libraries in this country are under threat of closure. We’re told there isn’t enough money for libraries; we’re told banks need the money more. Campaigns have been afoot across the country to save these vital cultural institutions. This book is a way of weaving together the way in which literature is a physical part of our everyday lives. Interspersed with the stylistically-daring short stories in this collection are testimonies about our personal relationships with libraries by people ranging from authors such as Helen Oyeyemi, Kate Atkinson, Kamila Shamsie, Miriam Toews and Jackie Kay to fabulous, passionate people in publishing like Anna Ridley and Anna James. Libraries make authors and publishers who make more books which in turn make more libraries and authors and publishers. Ali Smith’s “Public Library” is a vibrant, loving tribute to libraries, our passion for books and how they are an integral part of our communities.

Read my full review on LonesomeReader review of Public Library and other stories by Ali Smith

[Lulufrances · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a special book for various reasons.
a) First ever I've read by Ali Smith
b) First ever signed book I own.
Let me tell you how instance b) in particular came to happen.
I was browsing Waterstones in beautiful Cambridge during christmas break, somewhat consciously searching for Public Library as I'd come across mentions of it everywhere on the bookish part of the internet.
Ta Da - I found a single copy. - That's a bit odd, I thought to myself, this is a new release and it's post boxing day sales time, they're bound to have many more of this somewhere here.
And suddenly I got all excited - they probably even have signed copies, was one (ir-)rational thought I couldn't suppress.
Despite knowing for sure, I began searching the whole store and surprise, surprise, in the back near the poetry section they had a little table with signed books.
What made my bookish heart even happier, was the fact I was buying my first signed book, my first Ali Smith book in general, in Cambridge, the city she now lives in.
Aww, the memories.

All in all, this was a very lovely collection of short stories, I've heard some were recycled, but since I am new to Ali Smith, I didn't mind.
I definitely plan on getting more of her work pretty soon (especially "The Accidental" has me intrigued), as she has a wonderful writing style and clearly is in love with words.
I loved, loved, loved the little sections interspersed throughout about people and their fond memories of libraries, since I myself was that crazy girl that went to the "library-bus" that stops in our suburb, every Tuesday with a tummy full of butterflies and a sh-load of excitement as I skipped along my typical route to get there.
No joking, I was so excited e v e r y time, and spent the rest of the day sitting on my bed with mountains of books placed all around me, reading into them all a bit and then picking a few to finish that same day.
That's my personal Matilda moment and I love it.

Please don't let public libraries die.

[Inderjit Sanghera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smith coalesces account from various individuals on the importance of public libraries with vignettes which cover a variety of random yet wonderfully written topics; a man who is unable to convince the sinister forces behind a local newspaper who reported his death that he is very much alive, the story of the ashes of D.H Lawrence juxtaposed with 21st century credit card fraud, the downward spiral of a obscure Scottish poet, the history of regents park. Although the accounts and stories are, superficially at least, only loosely connected, there is perhaps a deeper connection between the two which explores the joys of literature, the irreverence of the imagination, the importance of not just public libraries but the stories which inhabit them in opening up our eyes and minds to the limitless possibilities of the world and the essential nature of stories in allowing us to connect with others and to fulfil our own potential. Stories are at the core of what makes us human and libraries are therefore libraries are vital preservers of our sense of humanity.

Literary characters are interspersed within the mundane accounts in Smith's short story collection; whether it be a history of Regents Park via the various writers who visited it, from Dickens to Woolf, or of ghost of Katharine Mansfield which haunts a failed relationship, the spectre of literature haunts the characters who inhabit the short stories, or in her explorations of the origins of words and how closely they relate or diverge or in the short story 'The Poet' which reads like a pastiche of the style and rhythm of a story from Joyce's collection 'Dubliners'.

'Public Library' is a subtle, yet powerful evocation of the joys of reading and the importance of libraries and the inevitable loss we will experience as they disappear to be replaced by the superficial trappings of modern life; a block of apartments or shop can never replace the stories which could be woven about them if there are no libraries left. 

[Sarah (is clearing her shelves) · Rating 2 out of 5]

19/2 - I've had this on my to read shelf (here as well as on my library's website) for some years now. Late last year I finally decided it was time to put it on hold, to be picked up at the end of January. The main reason I wanted to read this was its title and my desire to find a short story collection that I really enjoyed. Since I originally chose this as a (hopefully) prime example of a collection of short stories that would get me into the habit of reading them, I have read a few that I enjoyed (luckily, considering what I thought of this). I didn't think much of the stories that I read (the first two and the last one), I didn't care about any of the characters and was irrationally irritated by the way the font would alternate between italics and standard text from one story to the next. It may just be me and my dislike of Booker prize winning writing (two of Smith's previous books were nominated, something I wasn't aware of when I made the decision to read this), or maybe this just wasn't the best choice for an admitted 'short story sceptic' *shrug* either way on to something more enjoyable.

[Isobel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not sure why I’m still astounded by Ali Smith’s writing, I’ve read most of her novels now so know just what an amazing author she is. But still I am always surprised, always blown away.

This collection of short stories all include libraries somewhere; the stories are interspersed with quotes from writers and friends of Ali Smith who have told her about their experiences with them. It’s a wonderful testament to public libraries.

As ever I come away from reading her work hopeful and knowing lots of new facts, obscure and interesting. I love the way she never stereotypes people, a description of a person might lead you to think you know what will happen but you will be wrong — and how characters behave in Smith’s stories are probably far closer to how they would really act. Each story is so refreshing, a real joy.

[Akylina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I have yet to feel Ali Smith's charm.