Book Review: The Strange Library

The Strange Library describes a young man’s experiences at a library which he visits to return books, and gets entrapped into reading thick books. The book is absurd with a surreal touch to it. It leaves you with a sense of bewilderment and glazed eyes that refuse to see the world straight.


While I listened to the audio version, the book is supposed to be an illustrated novella written for children. I am sure children would have a very different experience of engaging with this book. There are elements that are sure to hold strong appeal to children. At the same time, this is the only book that I can recall that is meant for children and has delves on the darker side of humanity. The entire story revolves around grief and how the child deal with it. But the treatment of grief is subtle and complex. The saving grace is that the protagonist in the book is as bewildered as I felt after reading it.


Listening to the audio book has also made me wonder about the experience of engaging with books. At times, I had the feeling that my experience would have been completely different if I had read the text version. The voice in my head would stress some other words, or emote differently at certain places. My pace of reading would have been different. I would re- read certain passages. The possibility of listening to certain passages again seemed too cumbersome with having to rewind till exactly the right place. The voice of the author is mixed with the voice of the narrator, and the voice in my head. If I was reading it instead of listening to it, there would be one voice less. And I have no way of now knowing how that would be different from what I have interpreted the book to be.