05/29/2023
Anderson’s full length debut offers a sweet, uplifting story of small-town warmth and later-in-life inspiration. Fifty-year old Nan Nethercott has spent her whole career as an entry level librarian in the Philadelphia library system, while pursuing a variety of relationships with women, none of which have lasted. But when her hobby of applying for jobs elsewhere actually lands her the sole librarian position in the New Jersey Pine Barrens town of Pinetree, she’s ready to rewrite her life and make a difference. While navigating challenges like middle-school mayhem and a mystery patron leaving distressed messages via the titles of misplaced books, she also reboots her sex life via the local butch flirt while wishing for a deeper love.
Anderson does a great job establishing a wacky small-town vibe early in the story. Nan is an instantly relatable character, if not particularly dynamic and a bit overly sincere, and her arc from outsider to community member feels organic. Several supporting characters make strong impressions, especially Nan’s overinvolved landlady Immaculata and her quietly sympathetic husband Joe, but others, such as her library coworkers, are sketched out more vaguely. The narrative is episodic and externalized; readers see Nan engaging challenges and finding solutions, but there’s not enough complexity in her internal process, and each challenge feels relatively self-contained.
The happy ending’s revelation of generational wealth hidden in a town that can’t budget both a town and school librarian stretches credulity, and readers expecting romance genre-style storytelling should know that, yes, the story does find Nan emerging at last from a “long five years in a sexual desert.” But, while there is a love story here, it comes late, isn’t explicit, and presents little in the way of relationship challenges. This is an upbeat, low key middle-aged success fantasy in a world where being a lesbian is uncommon but well accepted, and readers will find satisfaction in Nan’s path toward self-reinvention and belonging.
Takeaway: Sweet, second-chance queer success story about a librarian’s bold choices.
Comparable Titles: Robin Alexander’s The Fall, Susie Dumond’s Queerly Beloved
Production grades Cover: A- Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A
05/29/2023
Anderson’s full length debut offers a sweet, uplifting story of small-town warmth and later-in-life inspiration. Fifty-year old Nan Nethercott has spent her whole career as an entry level librarian in the Philadelphia library system, while pursuing a variety of relationships with women, none of which have lasted. But when her hobby of applying for jobs elsewhere actually lands her the sole librarian position in the New Jersey Pine Barrens town of Pinetree, she’s ready to rewrite her life and make a difference. While navigating challenges like middle-school mayhem and a mystery patron leaving distressed messages via the titles of misplaced books, she also reboots her sex life via the local butch flirt while wishing for a deeper love.
Anderson does a great job establishing a wacky small-town vibe early in the story. Nan is an instantly relatable character, if not particularly dynamic and a bit overly sincere, and her arc from outsider to community member feels organic. Several supporting characters make strong impressions, especially Nan’s overinvolved landlady Immaculata and her quietly sympathetic husband Joe, but others, such as her library coworkers, are sketched out more vaguely. The narrative is episodic and externalized; readers see Nan engaging challenges and finding solutions, but there’s not enough complexity in her internal process, and each challenge feels relatively self-contained.
The happy ending’s revelation of generational wealth hidden in a town that can’t budget both a town and school librarian stretches credulity, and readers expecting romance genre-style storytelling should know that, yes, the story does find Nan emerging at last from a “long five years in a sexual desert.” But, while there is a love story here, it comes late, isn’t explicit, and presents little in the way of relationship challenges. This is an upbeat, low key middle-aged success fantasy in a world where being a lesbian is uncommon but well accepted, and readers will find satisfaction in Nan’s path toward self-reinvention and belonging.
Takeaway: Sweet, second-chance queer success story about a librarian’s bold choices.
Comparable Titles: Robin Alexander’s The Fall, Susie Dumond’s Queerly Beloved
Production grades Cover: A- Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A
2023-05-11
In Anderson’s novel, a queer Philadelphia librarian in a dead-end job spontaneously takes a promotion in New Jersey, where she falls for a younger, charismatic deli owner and revitalizes the local library.
It’s the 2010s, and the Pinetree, New Jersey, public library is searching for a town librarian to “drop-kick” the library “into the twenty-first century.” The job sounds perfect to 50-year-old Nan Nethercott, who’s had the same entry-level librarian job in the Philadelphia public library system since she graduated from library school 25 years ago with a master’s degree in library and information sciences. She gets the job and moves to Pinetree, where she meets a collection of “odd characters,” including old men in the library who squabble over the New York Times; elderly landlady Immaculata Fortunato, who refuses to let Nan go hungry; and “cute butchy flirty” deli owner Thomasina, nicknamed T. Nan needs to make her job in Pinetree work—which would be much simpler without ski-masked intruders screaming obscenities and a practitioner of “urinary vandalism” terrorizing the library. With ornery board president Phillip “Pip” Conti breathing down her neck, Nan must figure out how to stop the disruptions. Overall, this is a cozy romantic comedy that’s perfect for a beach read. The descriptions are, by turns, luxurious and hilarious, as in this early passage: “Nan was as unknown as the inside of a brand-new book, still smelling of fresh ink, its pages immaculate before readers dripped red wine on them or used a banana peel for a bookmark.” This quirky, funny novel will particularly charm queer female readers as well as anyone who enjoys older women’s stories of personal and career growth. The stakes are low and the tone is light, and Nan’s voice reveals her as a relatable character who’s desperate to change something—anything—about her life. The author might have spent more time fleshing out Nan’s reasons for leaving Pennsylvania, beyond a generic midlife crisis, but the sparse exposition doesn’t detract from this otherwise enjoyable story.
A breezy romantic comedy celebrating life’s second chances.
