Her new book The Librarian (Viking, £16.99) follows Sylvia Blackwell, a young woman who moves to a small town to work as a children’s librarian and falls in love with an older man. Before writing novels she worked as a special educational needs teacher and a Jungian psychoanalyst. Vickers' real skill as a story teller is in allowing each distinct voice to contribute to a complete, or as complete as can be, picture of one family.Born in Liverpool to communist parents, Vickers won a scholarship to attend private school before studying at Cambridge. Vickers lays bare the inner workings of one family, possibly every family, with an often disconcerting clarity * The Times on 'Cousins' * It is a hymn to the power of children's lightful * The Times * The Librarian will wring the heart of anyone who fell in love with books as a child. This beautifully crafted novel is a tribute to the power of books * S Magazine, Sunday Express * Vickers writes of relationships with undaunted clarity - Adam Phillips No one can dig down into the shrouded recesses of the human heart quite as forensically as Vickers * Sunday Times * a period tale of sentimental education, it's deliciously readable, with a clever epilogue zooming into the present day for a last gasp surprise * Daily Mail * 'Vickers has a formidable knack for laying open the human heart' Sunday TimesĪ nostalgic treat.involving and hopeful * Mail on Sunday *Įxcellent. 'Underneath the delightful patina of nostalgia for post-War England, there are stern and spiky questions about why we are allowing our children to be robbed of their heritage of story.' Frank Cottrell Boyce

The Librarian is a moving testament to the joy of reading and the power of books to change and inspire us all.

But her love affair with the local married GP, and her befriending of his precious daughter, her neighbour's son and her landlady's neglected grandchild, ignite the prejudices of the town, threatening her job and the very existence of the library with dramatic consequences for them all. Her mission is to fire the enthusiasm of the children of East Mole for reading. In 1958, Sylvia Blackwell, fresh from one of the new post-war Library Schools, takes up a job as children's librarian in a run down library in the market town of East Mole. 'Vickers sees with a clear eye and writes with a light hand she's a presence worth cherishing in the ranks of modern novelists.' Philip Pullman

The Librarian by Salley Vickers