Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Libraries pulse with stories and not only those preserved in books. When creative nonfiction virtuoso Orlean (Rin Tin Tin, 2011) first visited Los Angeles' Central Library, she was "transfixed." Then she learned about the 1986 fire, which many believed was deliberately set and which destroyed or damaged more than one million books and shut the library down for seven years. Intrigued, Orlean embarked on an all-points research quest, resulting in this kaleidoscopic and riveting mix of true crime, history, biography, and immersion journalism. While her forensic account of the conflagration is eerily mesmerizing, Orlean is equally enthralling in her awestruck detailing of the spectrum of activities that fill a typical Central Library day, and in her profiles of current staff and former head librarians, including "brilliant and forceful" Tessa Kelso, who ran into censorship issues, and consummate professional Mary Jones, who was forced out in 1905 because the board wanted a man. Orlean widens the lens to recount the crucial roles public libraries have played in America and to marvel at librarians' innovative and caring approaches to meeting diverse needs and cutting-edge use of digital technologies. She also attempts to fathom the truth about enigmatic Harry Peak, the prime arson suspect. Probing, prismatic, witty, dramatic, and deeply appreciative, Orlean's chronicle celebrates libraries as sanctuaries, community centers, and open universities run by people of commitment, compassion, creativity, and resilience. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Orlean's best-sellers have long lives, and this well-publicized praise song to libraries will have special book-lover appeal. Copyright 2018 Booklist Reviews.
BookPage Reviews
Shelf respect
The idea began with an interview. Susan Orlean's then 6-year-old son had a school assignment to interview a city employee in their new hometown of Los Angeles.
A boy after his mother's own heart, he chose a librarian. As the pair walked through the doors of a nearby branch library, Orlean, the famed author of The Orchid Thief, was overcome by what she calls "a Proustian kind of moment" filled with memories of countless childhood visits to the library in Shaker Heights, Ohio, with her mother, who worked in a bank but frequently declared that she would've loved to have been a librarian.
Now, years later, that moment has come full circle with the publication of Orlean's spellbinding love letter to this beloved institution, The Library Book, dedicated to her son (now a teenager) and late mother, who died from dementia as Orlean wrote her tribute.
"I got very emotional, thinking, these are amazing places and my association with them is so profound," Orlean recalls, speaking by phone from Banff, Canada. "I love writing about places that I feel that I know very well but have never really examined. The library was exactly that sort of place."
Nonetheless, when she casually mentioned to her publisher that she would enjoy spending a year in a library to see what goes on, she knew some sort of essential ingredient was missing from her pitch. "It felt a bit amorphous. I loved the idea of it, but it had a little bit of a saggy-baggy feel, and it didn't quite create a narrative."
"I love writing about places that I feel that I know very well but have never really examined. The library was exactly that sort of place."
It wasn't long before Orlean discovered—quite literally—the spark to enliven her account. She was invited on a personal tour of the Los Angeles Central Library, and at one point her librarian guide cracked open a book, held it to his face and "inhaled deeply," saying, "You can still smell the smoke in some of them."
Orlean was puzzled, asking if patrons had been allowed to smoke in the building in the past. The librarian shot her a wary look, then proceeded to tell her about a disastrous fire that consumed the building on April 29, 1986, reaching 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit and burning for more than seven hours, destroying or damaging more than a million books. Miraculously, there were no fatalities.
"I just about fell off my chair," Orlean says. "It was such an amazingly interesting and complicated story, and it provided me with this other narrative thread to take me through this bigger story of writing about libraries in general." Adding to the narrative appeal, the fire's cause remains a mystery—arson was suspected.
Orlean's account of the arson investigation reads like a whodunit. In her minute-by-minute account of the conflagration, she writes, "The library was spreading fluidly, like spilled ink." The stacks acted as fireplace flues, while the books provided fuel." One firefighter later told Orlean, "We thought we were looking at the bowels of hell." The main suspect was a young wannabe actor named Harry Peak, who died in 1993. An infuriating yet irresistible personality, Peak had a series of constantly changing alibis.
After interviewing Peak's family and friends, Orlean concludes that as likable as he seemed to be, he was "mighty close" to being a pathological liar. She notes that he offered each of his changing alibis "with certainty and a full-throated delivery of, ‘This is exactly what I was doing that day.'"
That's very rare, Orlean explains. "A lot of people have an alibi for a crime. It's rare to have seven."
She spent four and a half years researching, interviewing and writing. "I made a decision that I wanted to spend time in every department. Every piece of the library, from the people in the basement cataloging all the way up through all of the subject departments. That took a good amount of time, as well as just going [to the library] a lot to get a feel for the place."
Orlean's far-reaching research even involved starting her own little inferno so she could see firsthand what Peak might have experienced if he had indeed started the fire. Appropriately enough, she decided to burn a paperback copy of Ray Bradbury's classic book-burning novel, Fahrenheit 451. She chose a windless day in her backyard, finding the task "incredibly hard," because she has "come to believe that books have souls."
She was amazed to discover that books catch fire "like little bombs." She adds, "It just seemed like [the book] grabbed the flames and went boom. I remember asking my husband, ‘Did that just happen?' I kept thinking, ‘Wow, that was just crazy that went so fast.' There was nothing left."
With crackling, page-turning prose, Orlean manages to seamlessly weave the story of the library's devastating fire and the aftermath with a bird's eye look at both the mechanics of LA's immense city library and its unexpectedly riveting history. Just like the library itself, Orlean's book is filled to the brim with a wide array of fascinating details and behind-the-scenes personalities and anecdotes. For book lovers, it's a veritable treasure trove.
Orlean mentions that librarianship has become more popular. "It really does combine a sense of social contribution with a generation of young people who've grown up with information technology. I think there's a fascination with curating and accessing information, and then you combine that with doing something that feels like it has a social value."
Might her latest book inspire readers to join the profession?
"If that were to happen, I would feel that I had done something amazing."
This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
Author photo by Noah Fecks.
Copyright 2018 BookPage Reviews.BookPage Reviews
Book Clubs: November 2019
★ The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean offers an homage to libraries while investigating a mystery in The Library Book. Orlean delivers a riveting account of the 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire, which burned for over seven hours, was extinguished with roughly 3 million gallons of water and damaged or destroyed approximately a million books. In recounting the aftermath of the disaster, Orlean chronicles the investigations that ensued and the eventual arrest of an arson suspect—a disturbed young actor named Harry Peak. Along the way, she tracks the history of the Los Angeles Public Library and interviews librarians about their duties and the challenges they face on the job. This intriguing title is also a touching meditation on the author’s lifelong love of libraries and the invaluable services they provide to society.
Queenie by Candace Carty-Williams
Queenie, a young woman of Jamaican British background, tries to forget her white ex-boyfriend as she reenters the complicated world of interracial dating in this smart, briskly paced novel that explores issues of gender and relationships.
Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken
Local eccentric Bertha Truitt opens a bowling alley in Salford, Massachusetts, in the early 1900s. The alley stays in her family for generations, becoming the foundation for a quirky, compelling narrative about inheritance, connection and tradition.
The Age of Light by Whitney Scharer
After learning about photography from the artist Man Ray, model Lee Miller embarks on a career in Europe, pursuing art and love to their ultimate ends. Skillfully blending fact and fiction, Scharer makes an impressive debut with this bold historical novel.
The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
For dystopian fiction full of provocative questions but light on the violence often present in the genre, try Walker’s haunting portrait of a community torn apart by a mysterious, airborne sleeping sickness.
BookPage Reviews
Book Clubs: November 2019
★ The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean offers an homage to libraries while investigating a mystery in The Library Book. Orlean delivers a riveting account of the 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire, which burned for over seven hours, was extinguished with roughly 3 million gallons of water and damaged or destroyed approximately a million books. In recounting the aftermath of the disaster, Orlean chronicles the investigations that ensued and the eventual arrest of an arson suspect—a disturbed young actor named Harry Peak. Along the way, she tracks the history of the Los Angeles Public Library and interviews librarians about their duties and the challenges they face on the job. This intriguing title is also a touching meditation on the author’s lifelong love of libraries and the invaluable services they provide to society.
Queenie by Candace Carty-Williams
Queenie, a young woman of Jamaican British background, tries to forget her white ex-boyfriend as she reenters the complicated world of interracial dating in this smart, briskly paced novel that explores issues of gender and relationships.
Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken
Local eccentric Bertha Truitt opens a bowling alley in Salford, Massachusetts, in the early 1900s. The alley stays in her family for generations, becoming the foundation for a quirky, compelling narrative about inheritance, connection and tradition.
The Age of Light by Whitney Scharer
After learning about photography from the artist Man Ray, model Lee Miller embarks on a career in Europe, pursuing art and love to their ultimate ends. Skillfully blending fact and fiction, Scharer makes an impressive debut with this bold historical novel.
The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
For dystopian fiction full of provocative questions but light on the violence often present in the genre, try Walker’s haunting portrait of a community torn apart by a mysterious, airborne sleeping sickness.
Kirkus Reviews
An engaging, casual history of librarians and libraries and a famous one that burned down. In her latest, New Yorker staff writer Orlean (Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, 2011, etc.) seeks to "tell about a place I love that doesn't belong to me but feels like it is mine." It's the story of the Los Angeles Public Library, poet Charles Bukowski's "wondrous place," and what happened to it on April 29, 1986: It burned down. The fire raged "for more than seven hours and reached temperatures of 2000 degrees…more than one million books were burned or damaged." Though nobody was killed, 22 people were injured, and it took more than 3 million gallons of water to put it out. One of the firefighters on the scene said, "We thought we were looking at the bowels of hell….It was surreal." Besides telling the story of the historic library and its destruction, the author recounts the intense arson investigation and provides an in-depth biography of the troubled young man who was arrested for starting it, actor Harry Peak. Orlean reminds us that library fires have been around since the Library of Alexandria; during World War II, "the Nazis alone destroyed an estimated hundred million books." She continues, "destroying a culture's books is sentencing it to something worse than death: It is sentencing it to seem as if it never happened." The author also examines the library's important role in the city since 1872 and the construction of the historic Goodhue Building in 1926. Orlean visited the current library and talked to many of the librarians, learning about their jobs and responsibilities, how libraries were a "solace in the Depression," and the ongoing problems librarians face dealing with the homeless. The author speculates about Peak's guilt but remains "confounded." Maybe it was just an accident after all. Bibliophiles will love this fact-filled, bookish journey. Copyright Kirkus 2018 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Reviews
On April 29, 1986, the Los Angeles Public Library went up in a blaze that would be the worst library fire in America's history, destroying more than 400,000 books. Who setthe fire, and why? After moving to Los Angeles, New Yorker staff writer Orlean (The Orchid Thief) decides to seek answers.
Copyright 2018 Library Journal.Library Journal Reviews
In this lively and multilayered portrait of the Los Angeles Public Library by Orlean (
Publishers Weekly Reviews