In The beholder a woman who has suffered a series of life altering events finds a growth on her chest. Good voice is narrated by a woman who speaks to her dead father and ruminates on the First World War. While she tries to effect a rescue she muses on the changing meanings of various words. In Last the narrator sees a wheelchair-bound woman has been left behind on a train.
These interludes are entitled “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” and “the infinite possibilities”.Īs in Smith’s previous collections the short stories included here tend to have similar structures whereby the narrator will start off on one course and then veer onto another, and on occasion a return to the first topic will occur.
Smith’s stories are interleaved with Smith and her correspondents’ memories of libraries and their importance to civilised life. The prefatory “Library” is an apparently true story about Smith and her publisher coming across a building emblazoned Library but it’s an exclusive club instead. The book cover and spine have “Public library” as the title but the colophon shows “ Public library ” (actually struck through several times.) As is usual in Smith’s output the left hand margin is justified but the right hand one is not – curiously, though, the acknowledgements page has the reverse.
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