In Between The Shelves: Review of Reading Allowed

Little, Brown, £14.99

Review by Rosemary Goring

LIKE many novelists, Chris Paling has a paying job. “Nobody sets out with the intention of becoming a mid-list writer, but that is the destination of most,” he writes, resigned to the fact that despite critical plaudits, he is unlikely to make the dreamed-of breakthrough. He works as a library assistant in a small English city within reach of London. Nowhere does he name it, but when he describes it as a place where young people go to retire, it is not hard to guess.

In a chapter entitled Shelving McEwan, Paling relates how this book came about. During a conversation with his agent, the late Deborah Rogers (whose clients included the novelist Ian McEwan), she suggested he turn his hand to non-fiction. When he whined at the thought, like a child on a rainy afternoon, she told him “an idea would come”. Some time later, after her death, he realised that the answer might lie in his new occupation, and the result is a gentle, occasionally dull, yet absorbing account of a year behind the issues desk or patrolling the stacks in a busy provincial library.

Those who view libraries as repositories of intellectual gold, and think their value to the community lies primarily in the cerebral and cultural opportunities they offer, might not warm to Paling’s more touchy-feely perspective. In this unpretentious journal, he focuses less on the ordinary, unobtrusive users who come in for their fortnightly fix of novels, biographies or histories, and far more on the strays and waifs for whom the library is a much more basic essential.

These include the Mad Hatter, a well-dressed old gentleman whose memory flickers in and out of reception; the Travelling Man, also elderly, who lives mostly in the anecdotal past; and the ever-cheerful pink-clad Trish and her group of friends with learning difficulties, whose visits leave the library a happier place. Others of the flotsam and jetsam who drift through the aisles and reading rooms are more threatening, among them drug addicts, alcoholics and down and outs, though the worst they do is shoot up or smoke spice in the toilets and get into the occasional scrap. Only one of the regulars seems seriously worrying, his predatory presence looming throughout the book.

Paling is a mildly-mannered, unpontifical presence, who does not antagonise even the most irritating readers, and neither aggrandises nor glamorises the librarian’s role. Blocked toilets and rat-infested sewers rather than inter-library loans and classification protocols are the constant refrain at staff briefings.

Reading up on Andrew Carnegie, the godfather of libraries, he is impressed by Carnegie’s story of self-education, but its relevance to the work he does today seems almost tangential: “As has been proved many times since I began working here, this building, which just happens to house books for improvement and entertainment, is in greater demand as a sanctuary. It’s warm. It has a roof, running water, toilets and, as such, when the nights are cold, it’s a tough place to leave.”

Even so, on his rounds he regularly counts 100-plus students studying in peace, users of the library’s unique space whose presence is never registered on the issues desk, yet for whom the place and what it represents are invaluable.

Although at times the writing can be a little slap-dash and lazy, Paling’s unflashy, plain-speaking and observant style is engaging. Though he does not parade it, his years as a novelist show in his shaping of scenes and conversations. And while his fellow feeling for more vulnerable readers is palpable, only rarely does he allow his imagination fully off the hook. One such occasion is when a man from the other end of the country calls to say he has found a wallet with a library card. “‘Yes, I’m in Northumberland. Near Hexham. I run a garage ...’ I pictured an Edward Hopper-like scene – three red old-fashioned petrol pumps, the soft orange glow of the lights. A tiny, lit hut. The human condition personified as a gas station.”

Midway through this seasonal account, divided into bite-size chapters, the long-dreaded budget cuts are announced, and within weeks, 40 staff have taken redundancy. The rows of “orphan” mugs in the tearoom once they have left speak for themselves, as does the mood of those who remain, dreading what further civic vandalism lies ahead. Paling’s disgust is palpable. He writes of one library authority whose online catalogue now provides a link to Amazon, so readers unable to order the title they want can buy it instead. As the book approaches its end, so his fury mounts: “If the most senior member of the government at the time of writing considers libraries solely as places where information is provided then the battle is lost.”

As Reading Allowed testifies, libraries are places where stories arrive hourly, in the shape of readers and the dispossessed and lonely. There is great charity and warmth in Paling’s journal, but its overriding tone is of pathos and poignancy, of the precarious future of community hubs whose full role is never spelled out, but must be read between the lines. If panjandrums in charge of public spending could be persuaded to read this, it would surely kick-start a few stone hearts.

Chris Paling will be speaking at Glasgow’s book festival Aye Write! on March 9 at 6pm. The Herald and Sunday Herald are media sponsors of Aye Write! www.ayewrite.com