The Stopping Place

The Stopping Place will do nothing to help the mystique of the librarian.  Ruby is a quiet gal who works at the library trying to blend into the background by making herself as invisible as she can, with dark, dowdy clothes.  Down in the library basement, Ruby slowly unravels the life of Lady Breck, whose diaries and personal effects are being archived.  Ruby sees something in the documents and photographs that parallel her own past which she has kept hidden from her colleagues.  I could go further but don’t want to give anything away as this is the first book in ages which I just wanted to consume, to lose myself in the depths of the text, and don’t want to stop others from having a similarly fulfilling experience.  It is so richly written you can almost smell the archetypal woods,  that part of her story takes place in and you certainly get as caught up in her life as she does in Lady Breck’s.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see this on a literary prize list later this year.