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The Underground Library is an important work
Book Review
By Derryll White
Ryan, Jennifer (2024). The Underground Library.
“Being in the library reminded her of life’s potential, of who she wanted to be.”
-Jennifer Ryan
This historical novel brings back memories of the London bomber blitz during the Second World War. The author explores the humanity (and inhumanity) of that time. Going into WW II Britain was still a class-bound society, with rigid moral rules and distinct separation between economic groups. Jennifer Ryan is immensely successful in showing how the experiences of war, the sheer terror and the relentless pounding of the Nazi bombers, broke down some of the social strictures and threw people into one another’s arms.
The author is adept at exploiting the reader’s emotions, delighting one moment and bringing tears to the eyes in another. This is a great book for young women today, offering head librarian Juliet as a model of what a woman can achieve with thought, action and perseverance. It makes the male reader slightly ashamed to think of how social attitudes still discriminate by gender.
Jennifer Ryan is a very good storyteller and a wonderful researcher. The characters in this work pull up essences of the time and experience of WW II London. Mrs. Baxter is the true social bitch. Sofie is the archetypal immigrant, battered by circumstance and yet still supported by those who care. Juliet is any motivated woman caught in circumstances that try to hem her in and belittle her. Sebastian is the guy men aspire to be.
‘The Underground Library’ is an important work that speaks very clearly to the place books still have in our 21st Century. The eloquence the author focuses on the institution of libraries will be embraced by every reader. Best of all, I found this book in our library.
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Excerpts from the novel:
MEN’S RIGHTS – She’d hoped that in London people might have been more progressive, that the war might have changed things as women stepped up to replace the men lost to the front line. But in spite of this, men like Mr. Pruitt were still holding on to the past, protecting men’s rights to lofty positions because women were supposedly too flighty to be of any practical use. Clinging onto this belief was in men’s interest, after all: they got to keep their power, regardless whether they deserved it.
BOOKS – “First of all I’d like to say a word about why we are here: Books.” A few chuckles went around the small room before Juliet went on. “To me, books are like old friends, telling us great truths, holding our hands through the difficulties, showing us light and joy at the end of every tunnel.”
NAZIS – “Most were burned, but libraries were kept open as cultural centers. They were quickly filled with Hitler’s books and new authors pedaling Nazi propaganda. The banned authors fled the country. Papa told me that Brecht left immediately, saying, “Where you burn books, you ultimately burn people.”
They sat in solemn silence until Dorothy asked, “Which authors were banned?”
“Most of the good German authors and everyone Jewish, of course. A lot of European authors were banned, too. I watched them strip libraries of Tolstoy, Huxley, and Dostoevsky, and American authors like Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald.”
1940 SOCIAL PRESSURES – Her voice cracked with tears. “Do you understand the full scale of what this means, the social disgrace? Our entire family will be cast out of the community and all because of your stupidity!”
The deep grimace made her mother look older, craggier. It was as if she had taken off her mask, let Katie see the reality: the woman desperately protecting the respectability she had so carefully fostered. Katie’s father had always accused her mother of marrying above her station, bringing lower-class habits into their family. Brought up in the tenements, she’d made it her mission to don the cloak of respectability – the pretense that Katie’s pregnancy now threatened.
POWER OF BOOKS – And with a sudden kinship for their lost library, she began to read.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
And as the opening lines of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities swam in front of her eyes, she grasped the true and immense power of books. How they could transcend time and speak to an inner voice. How much they needed them. And that no matter what the Nazis did, they could never take that away.
LIBRARY BOOKS – I read that there’s a library in New York where they’re keeping a copy of every Jewish book banned by the Nazis to make sure at least one of each is left in the world.” Dorothy watched him flicking through the book. “But perhaps you should read The Metamorphosis again, just in case. A book isn’t just a physical object; once you’ve read it, it becomes a thought, a story, a memory that is alive inside you forever. Whatever the Nazis take from us, they can’t take that.”
LEBENSRAUM – “Every Polish-language book was destroyed, every publisher burned to the ground, and every bookshop containing anything in Polish was demolished. They wanted to eradicate every part of Polish culture. We were part of their Lebensraum campaign – the expansion of Germany – and completely obliterating our language, our ideals, and our past was part of their Germanification program.”
LIBRARIES – “Libraries aren’t only about books; they’re about people. They’re about human life, how books can mend hearts, comfort wounds, and inspire us. But most of all, books can bring people together. Their ideas and thoughts make us realize that we are not alone, that we are all connected.”
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
