![]() ![]() ![]() Sometimes, a novel can hit targets that non-fiction can obscure in a haze of mere facts and figures. To that extent, this is an autobiographical tale, but that is not its primary purpose. Salley Vickers makes no secret of the fact that it was, indeed, a Miss Blackwell in the library that she visited as a child who stimulated her own love of books, and so contributed to her formation as one of our best-loved novelists. ![]() Or, rather, it is Sylvia Blackwell, the newly arrived young librarian with a vision to revive the local library’s children’s section, who is the centre of attention. ![]() The sisters had chosen to purge any alcoholic taint in the family blood with a substantial legacy to East Mole, a charitable act which had produced the Town Hall, the Assembly Rooms and the library.”Īnd it is the library that provides the catalyst for this witty and perceptive portrait of English small-town life in the 1950s. “EAST MOLE - if there ever was a West Mole it had long vanished into obscurity - was one of those small middle-English country towns whose reputation rests on an understanding that it has known better days.īack in the late nineteenth century the town had been blessed by the patronage of the Tillotson sisters, teetotal spinsters from a branch of a local family who had made their fortune in gin. ![]()
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