How often do we read a book in which a librarian is the heroine? Highly recommended by NPR staff as well as our own Library Director, Erich Reed.
The Man Who Came Uptown.
Pelecanos, George (author).
Pelecanos’ first novel in five years (following The Double) proves well worth the wait. There are two protagonists here and two very different but related story lines. Anna Kaplan is the mobile librarian at the Washington, D.C., jail, where she is both readers’ advisor and book-club leader to inmates ranging from juveniles to those in the “Fifty and Older” unit. Michael Hudson is one of Anna’s protégés, a young African American who had never read a book before going to prison but who now wolfs down everything Anna feeds him, from Elmore Leonard to Edward P. Jones to Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. Released from prison and returning to D.C. (“going uptown” in jail parlance), he dives into the pleasures of reading on the outside—getting his own library card, buying a bookshelf—but he also finds himself drawn back into the criminal life. Blackmailed by the bent investigator who engineered his release from prison, Michael is forced to serve as getaway driver for several vigilante-like strikes against drug dealers and pimps. The thriller plot is taut and suspenseful, as jolting as it is carefully nuanced, but it is Pelecanos’ focus on character, on his ability to show the richness and depth of his people, as well as their often-heartbreaking yearning for something more, that gives this novel—and all his work—its special power. The fact that this time that elusive “something more” comes in the form of books will make this a novel to treasure for anyone who, like Michael, has been bitten by the reading bug.
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Pelecanos’ TV work, on The Wire and Treme especially, will extend the reach of his latest novel, which will profit from extensive media exposure.
— Bill Ott
NPR did an interview with both the author and the prison librarian who was the inspiration for the character of the same profession in the book.