The Ladies' Lending Library: A Novel - Softcover

Keefer, Janice Kulyk

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061479071 ISBN 13: 9780061479076

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2009

Synopsis

“A deeply thoughtful, beautifully written novel.” — Washington Post Book World

A portrait of women caught between countries, cultures, and aspirations—a bittersweet tale, set in the 1960s, of mothers, daughters, friends, and lovers during one unforgettable summer

August, 1963: the year of the sensational release of Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, showcasing a passion too grand to be contained on the movie screen. The women of the Kalyna Beach cottage community, part of a group of first-generation Ukrainian Canadians, gather for gin and gossip, trading the current racy bestsellers among themselves as they seek a brief escape from the predictable rhythms of children and chores.

But dramatic change is coming this summer as innocence falters and the desire for change reaches a boiling point, threatening to disrupt the warm, sweet, heady days and the lives of parents and children, family and friends, forever.

About this title

About the Author

Janice Kulyk Keefer is widely acclaimed for her novels, short story collections, poetry, and nonfiction. The Ladies' Lending Library is her fifth novel. She lives in Toronto.

From the Back Cover

It is August of 1963, the year of the Taylor/Burton film epic Cleopatra, showcasing a passion too grand to be contained on the movie screen. The women of the Kalyna Beach cottage community gather for gin and gossip, trading the current racy bestsellers among themselves as they seek a brief escape from the predictable rhythms of children and chores. But dramatic change is coming this summer as innocence falters and the desire for change reaches a boiling point, threatening to disrupt the warm, sweet, heady days and the lives of parents and children, family and friends, forever.

Reviews

The Ukrainian-Canadian housewives of idyllic 1960s Kalyna Beach, Ontario, find that show business scandal has far-reaching power in this latest from Canadian novelist Keefer, her first published in the U.S. While their husbands work, former model Sonia Martyn and friends spend the summer of 1963 watching their children on the beach and reading racy books to discuss over Friday cocktails, while the kids test the limits of their mothers' supervisory skills and traditional Ukrainian values. Moms and daughters alike have become enchanted by the new film Cleopatra and the scandalous love affair between stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. When the beautiful, sad wife of a local millionaire embarks on her own misbegotten affair, the ladies of Kalyna Beach feel their familiar world shift, opening up novel possibilities for freedom and betrayal. Keefer neatly captures the security and claustrophobia of immigrant communities, but diffuses her story's power with too many points of view. Just as the ladies' books cannot match the drama in their lives, this story only begins to capture the personal cost of immigration and assimilation. (Jan.)
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Canada in the 1960s is the setting for Keefer’s melancholy tale of a group of Ukrainian immigrants whose lives are conspicuously connected—by blood or circumstance. For the principal characters, the excitement of relocation to the Great White North has faded into a steady, at times numbing rhythm made up of raising families and going to work. Their one escape is summers spent at an idyllic lakeside resort, where the women read and discuss racy books, and their children begin to explore the mysteries of the opposite sex. (The husbands only come up on weekends, disrupting the women’s scandalous literary pursuits.) Sasha Plotsky is the ringleader of the reading group, the envy of many of the women because she always says just what she thinks. But her best friend, Sonia Martyn, a former model trapped in a lackluster marriage, is the novel’s driving force, spending the summer trying to keep the peace among a cluster of passionate personalities. Readers of Gilmore’s Golden Country (2006) will find much to like in this poignant saga of real life and unrealized dreams. --Allison Block

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061479071
• ISBN 13: 9780061479076
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 355