In an introduction to her latest collection of short fiction, Ali Smith explains (primarily for US readers) the impetus behind the book: to raise awareness of --- and argue against --- the growing trend in the UK of public libraries losing government funding, instead being forcibly transitioned to a volunteer-run, donation-funded model that, as Smith notes, is threatening the public library’s hard-won tradition of “democracy of reading, democracy of space.”

Smith’s own stories are interspersed with short first-person accounts --- including some from other writers as well as by ordinary folks --- of what libraries mean, and have meant, in their own lives. PUBLIC LIBRARY, then, is a fiction collection with a decidedly political agenda, but that makes it no less compelling or satisfying as a work of literature.

"...a fiction collection with a decidedly political agenda, but that makes it no less compelling or satisfying as a work of literature."

Smith’s stories celebrate the power of libraries as well, possibly less directly but no less powerfully. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Smith’s penchant for wordplay and linguistic exploration in her novels like THERE BUT FOR THE and HOW TO BE BOTH, many of the stories collected here are actually about words, about the ability of a single word or phrase to summon a whole poem, and with it, a whole series of memories and recollections tied up with those words and verses. In “Last,” a woman rescues another woman trapped on a train, all while considering the meaning of words like “buxom,” “tell” and “last.” In “The Human Claim,” a disputed credit card charge prompts unexpected connections to the work of D. H. Lawrence. Lawrence, as well as the writer Katherine Mansfield, shows up in more than one story. In “The Ex-Wife,” the narrator disparages her ex-partner’s too-keen interest in Mansfield.

In some stories, the connection to reading and to libraries is more abstract. “Elsewhere” offers a short, lovely meditation on the longing for something different, the kind of longing that many may satisfy through books and reading (although that connection is never made explicit here: “Elsewhere there are no religions. Elsewhere there are no borders. Elsewhere nobody is a refugee or an asylum seeker whose worth can be decided about by a government…. Elsewhere the words of the politicians are nourishing to the heart…. Elsewhere history has been kind.”)

Combined with the testimonials about other readers’ and writers’ palpable connections to libraries, these words are a potent reminder of the power of books to enable everyone to imagine an Elsewhere and of the ability of a well-funded public library to get books in the hands of anyone and everyone.