The Ladies' Lending Library: A Novel [Paperback]

Janice Kulyk Keefer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2009

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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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From Booklist

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

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Product Details

• Paperback: 355 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (January 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061479071
• ISBN-13: 978-0061479076
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,396,668 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of tertiary stories..., March 9, 2009

By 

Empark (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ladies' Lending Library: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is fascinating. It's definitely "chick lit"--lots of interactions between women but also interactions between families (parents and kids and siblings and cousins and friends...). There's a few major themes but it's one of the tertiary stories that will move you and make you think. It's set among several Ukranian immigrants that live for the summer in cottages along a fictional lake in Ontario. Much of the action is related to the last two weeks of summer. You can definitely picture the women and kids and all that is going on. The cover photo is misleading--I don't think it's supposed to be the 39 year old main protagonist...and it doesn't really fit her 16 year old mother's helper (who is always in a bikini) either. If you want a haunting beach read and you're a little interested in immigrant stories in 60's Canada then this is the book.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Where's the Story?, April 16, 2009

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topcat44 (central Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ladies' Lending Library: A Novel (Paperback)

Having grown up in the 60's I wanted to like this book; but found it to be very confusing and boring to read. There were too many characters, and very little story. Consequently, I thought it was difficult to keep people straight much less get interested in any of them. Maybe it would have made sense if I could have stuck it out to the end, but I finally gave up reading half way through! I am sorry I bought this one. My advice is if it sounds good and you think you want to try it--get it from the library!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing - Enough Said, December 10, 2009

By 

SixtiesHippie - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ladies' Lending Library: A Novel (Paperback)

I picked up this book back in the Spring of this year, shortly after it hit bookshelves. However, I didn't start reading it until mid-November, considering that I had other books to still read. However, by the first few pages, I was anything, but impressed. The novel lacked an actual plot, and you truly felt like the story was going nowhere. It was filled with different points of views of the many female characters, and I found myself becoming lost, confused, though most of all, impatient. Soon after, I put the book down, and never looked back. The book absolutely bored me to tears. However, I do give credit to the fact that the stories were incredibly detailed, and well-written, but sadly, there didn't seem like there was much of a point to them. When I first got the book, I knew it took place in the 1960's, which is a decade I am very fasinated by, and I hoped to see what life was like back then. I didn't see much of a difference, though.