Public Library and Other Stories by Ali Smith review – passionate about the printed word

Ali Smith’s collection of cleverly short stories, linked by literature and a love of language, makes for a highly eloquent defence of public libraries

When you are in a library, you might not know what book you are looking for but the chances are that, even if you don’t, you will find it. As libraries and bookshops close, that keenest of pleasures – browsing, roaming, happening on whatever it was you did not know you were lacking – is in jeopardy, a joy the internet cannot replicate. Smith’s book that, in inferior hands, could have been a worthy bore, is a brilliant, comprehensive, unpredictable defence of public libraries. It is also a collection of stories characterised by an imaginative freedom underpinned by her reading. You can travel anywhere on an Ali Smith library ticket.

In a talk at last summer’s Edinburgh book festival, Smith explained that while editing this book, she asked friends what libraries meant to them (their eloquent answers bookmark her stories) and that during that short time – a couple of months – 23 libraries closed. Over the last seven years, more than a thousand have gone. The passion with which Smith resists this decline is moving – she has an unswerving sense that we are what we read. Her stories illustrate, too, that our lives are defined by what we borrow.

Continue reading...