The fact that my first memories of the children’s section are also my first memories of unsupervised freedom certainly has colored my lifelong relationship with libraries, not to mention this novel. Rebecca Makkai (RM): My very small elementary school didn’t have a library, and so we were allowed to walk down the block to the public library in groups of three or four with a special pass. It’s pretty obvious that this is not an autobiographical novel, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that libraries have nonetheless appealed to you for quite some time. Rebecca’s short fiction will appear in The Best American Short Stories this fall for the fourth consecutive year, and appears regularly in journals like Tin House, Ploughshares, New England Review and Shenandoah.Įrika Dreifus (ED): Rebecca, congratulations on the publication of The Borrower. Rebecca Makkai is a Chicago-based writer whose first novel, The Borrower (Viking, June 2011), is an Indie Next pick and has garnered rave reviews in O Magazine, BookPage, and Booklist (starred review) among others. This is a terrific book–I had a tough time putting it down–and I’m delighted to welcome its author for a Q&A.

But is it just Ian who is running away? Who is the man who seems to be on their tail? And should Lucy be trying to save a boy from his own parents?” The odd pair embarks on a crazy road trip from Missouri to Vermont, with ferrets, an inconvenient boyfriend, and upsetting family history thrown in their path. Desperate to save him from Pastor Bob and the Drakes, Lucy allows herself to be hijacked by Ian. Lucy stumbles into a moral dilemma when she finds Ian camped out in the library after hours with a knapsack of provisions and an escape plan. The precocious Ian is addicted to reading, but needs Lucy’s help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has enrolled Ian in weekly antigay classes with celebrity Pastor Bob. “Lucy Hull, a young children’s librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, finds herself both a kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, ten- year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home. Here’s a brief description from the publisher:

Now, Speakeasians and everyone else can enjoy this much-awaited, much-praised novel: The Borrower. I’m just one of many Speakeasians who delighted in the news, awhile back, that Rebecca’s first novel had been bought by Viking. Rebecca’s posts quickly earned her admiration and affection from the rest of the Speakeasy community. We connected several years ago on the Poets & Writers Speakeasy forum.

Rebecca Makkai is another writer I’ve been lucky to “meet” online. (This interview appeared initially in The Practicing Writer, August 2011.)

The borrower by rebecca makkai