The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections - Eva Jurczyk - ★★.¼

AUTHOR: Eva Jurczyk

GENRE: Drama.

PUBLICATION DATE: January 25, 2022

RATING: 2.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A debut novel that tries to fit into too many genres and tackle too many themes. So it doesn’t work as well as it could have with a more streamlined approach. The plot is decent, but the character detailing is repetitive. Expected more from a ‘book about books.’

Plot Preview:

Leisl, who has been working as a deputy director at the titular library department, is suddenly called to fill in as the interim director when her boss Christopher ends up in a coma after a stroke. The issue is that key investors are coming to take a look at a new acquisition: the $500,000 Plantin Polyglot Bible, which is safely locked in the safe whose code is known only by Christopher. After a lot of effort, Leisl manages to open the safe, only to discover that it is empty. When Leisl approaches her reporting head and her colleagues with her concerns and asks them to report the theft to the police, no one takes her seriously. Soon, a fellow librarian also goes missing. Now it is up to Leisl to discover the truth, because the others are clearly hiding something.

The story comes to us in the third person perspectives of multiple characters over multiple timelines.

Bookish Yays:

📚 I enjoyed the bits about rare books, their care and preservation. The tidbits about the Polyglot Bible and the Peshawar manuscript (possibly based on the real-life Bakhshali manuscript) are interesting to read.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

📖 Using a senior woman as the lead character is a commendable choice. Leisl is at the age where she can legitimately be the deputy director of a library. However, the age factor is not properly utilised. We aren’t told Leisl’s exact age ever; all we get is cues such as “I’ve worked here for four decades.” Plus, hardly anything in her arc makes her sound like a senior woman. Her naivete as well as her physical prowess seem to fit a much younger woman. Not to forget that the cover is totally inaccurate in its depiction of Leisl.

📖 The variations in timelines and perspectives add depth to what would otherwise have been a straightforward plot. However, the flashbacks give a big spoiler about the mystery if you pay careful attention. Moreover, the segues into the past are quite random, and hence distracting.

📖 As is common with debut novels, this book suffers from the “kitchen sink syndrome”, with a multitude of unrelated themes thrown into the mix: mental health and depression, gender discrimination, LGBT discrimination, marital issues, obsessions over books, the glass ceiling, male gaslighting… In all this clutter, the key topic of rare books gets the least attention. I did like how the book handled the mental health issue – it was fairly realistic.

📖 Netgalley has this book marked as women’s fiction and a book club read. Goodreads users have tagged it a contemporary mystery. This disparity partially explains the lower ratings. The fact is, when there are missing books and a missing character within the first few chapters, no one will read this as a women’s fiction. But as a mystery, the book doesn’t really deliver because there is no investigation, and the ‘mystery’ itself is somewhat obvious. The story is more like a literary drama. It worked better for me once I stopped expecting a mystery.

Bookish Nays:

📕 The biggest issue is the lack of character development. No character grows over the course of the story. Leisl should have been the highlight considering her age and position, but she comes off as an ignorant newbie who has jumped in at the deep end and is now floundering to stay afloat. As she was already in a high position and had worked at the library for so long, her confused and underconfident behaviour didn’t make sense. Nor did her job profile – such a high post and all she did was handle admin-related work? Plus, the behaviour of her male colleagues towards her is abysmal. The constant gaslighting feels repetitive and overdone.

📕 Miscommunication too is a big problem. The book length could have been halved if everyone spoke the truth and/or called the police on time. But there is too much dillydallying. The men keep avoiding the issue whenever Leisl brings it up, and this feels very unrealistic considering the millions at stake.

📕 I didn’t get why every chapter was broken into subparts: Part 1, Part 2,… It made me feel like I was reading a textbook. A simple line/image separator would have been far less distracting.

📕 The eponymous department is supposedly based on an actual rare books library in one of the universities in Toronto. This book is also based in Toronto, but we see nothing of the city except the name. I wish the locational setting had been better established. An author’s note about the actual library would also have been welcome.

All in all, this isn’t a bad book, but it could have been much more. The characters as well as the plot had potential, but because of the plethora of scattered themes, the core plotline loses impact. It might work better if you read it as a character-oriented drama than as a mystery.

My thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.