A unconventional upstairs-downstairs whodunnit featuring complex characters, emotional depth, lush scene-setting, eye-opening plot twists and a satisfying conclusion.
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction.
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review in one word: Satisfying
A bittersweet coming-of-age novel and ultra-compelling whodunnit set in the Victorian era. The protagonist Florence Granger is a mixed race young woman who can pass as white in a world not evolved enough to accomodate ethnic difference. This debut novel by Kuchenga Shenjé is highly ambitious and many harsh reviewers on Good Reads lambast the novel for its ‘woke’ content. These scathing reviews had an ignorant and prejudiced edge and seemed to be a myopic and closed-minded take on this expansive novel.
For me, the Library Thief is a brave and transgressive look at the traditional Victorian novel that tackles themes of homosexuality, trans identity, mixed race identity and blackness, colonialism, slavery, class and friendship and puts a fresh and modern lens on these timeless and yet contemporary issues. Which – despite what some may say, were ever-present themes of everyday life, even during the Victorian era. Even if they were not depicted in the traditional Victorian novels of that time. People were gay and trans during this time, and people were black and mixed race at this time as well.
In terms of the storyline, I am reluctant to reveal too much. The novel’s heroine Florence Granger is an apprentice bookbinder helping her father in the family business Granger’s Bookbinders in Manchester. She’s caught in a compromising act with her lover and disowned by her father. She intercepts a request from a valued client in Lancashire and travels to the Rose Hall where she is tasked with restoring the rare and expensive books in Lord Francis Belfield’s personal library.
So unfolds a gothic mystery and upstairs/downstairs whodunnit with a cast of vibrant characters. I found the dialogue, characters and scene-setting lush, vibrant and believable. This is the kind of novel to sink into a completely lose yourself in. Shenjé masterfully and effortlessly weaves in themes of class, sexuality and race into the fabric of the every day. Here, the composition of a Sunday church sermon is described:
“In the first five pews sat the landed gentry with wives in black or navy satins and velvets, the most ostentatious in deep sapphires, emeralds and violets. All the husbands in the same uniform of morning suit with their hats laid next to them beside their well-trained children praying piously or with their eyes fixed ahead. I knew enough to avoid wearing anything made from loud rustling material, but I felt plain and shabby in my grey dress and threadbare shawl. We sat among the staff. Governesses, footmen, maids and gardeners; all clearly sat in order of importance within the small village, and then their own households.”
There’s a lot of really amazing dialogue moments in this novel that flow well and yet unpick very large and deep themes like what it means to be white, and what it means to be non-white but be able to pass as white in a world not ready for difference. As someone who is non-white but who can sometimes pass for white, these were profound moments indeed. It’s a potent reminder why fiction should reflect not just the dominant white Anglo-Saxon narrative of the world, but a world where all kinds of people can see themselves and their cultural and ethnic ambiguity reflected back to them.
“Do you see me as white still?” I enquired.
“No. I never did really.”
“Why?”
“Well, I suppose the rebellious troublemaker in you made me think of you as apart from them. It’s just that because you look white to others, you feel you can fight from the inside. I’ll never be let inside like you. I just want to sail away. You want to be the one to light the match. I admire that about you.”
The Library Thief by Kuchenga Shenjé
How is this for an opening paragraph for a novel?! I have to say knowing nothing about this book and reading this I had to read on. It’s a booklover and a library-lover’s feast for the senses that is deeply rewarding.
“I fell in love with the feel of the cotton before I fell in love with the books. Leather felt too masculine and reptilian. Cloth was so much warmer and didn’t slip out of my hands as easily. As a child I played underneath the tables and made toy families from the scraps that fell at my father’s boots.
He would never talk to me about where the cloth we used came from, nor the contents of the books we worked on.”
The Library Thief by Kuchenga Shenjé
There’s some deep and intense themes in this book, but Shenjé‘s masterful treatment of many heavy topics spins these into a compelling storytelling gold. I heartily recommend this book for rewarding historical fiction with a modern lens.
Content Catnip 
looks good.
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