Check out The Dewey Decimal System of Love by Josephine Carr.



For questions about love, and more particularly, inappropriate love, go to the 306.7’s. Have you ever had an extended conversation with a librarian? Not just any librarian, but a researcher who wears blouses with high necklines, glasses and a neat French twist, acts reserved and discreet, and is completely obsessed with the Dewey Decimal System? This debut novel features such a creature, who by telling her story directly to the reader expands and distorts the stereotype of the spinster librarian even as she allows it to define her self-image. Ally Sheffield has spent the last fifteen years of her life perfecting her Philadelphia apartment - open floor plan, antique velvet draperies, feather pillows - and creating a comfortable space for her solitary, celibate, bibliophilic lifestyle. Contrary to what you might assume, at forty, she isn’t lonely or worried about her single status, at least not until she falls instantly and intensely in love with the new symphony conductor, Aleksi Kullio. Ally and her best friend Suzanne, a lawyer bored with maternity leave, begin following Aleksi’s wife after seeing her researching poisons. After Ally volunteers in the symphony’s archives to get closer to Aleksi, she makes discoveries about the Kullios and about her own musician father. Overcome by feelings of desire, want, need, lust, and all of the other emotions that she has excluded from her orderly life, Ally takes Suzanne’s advice and makes some drastic changes in her appearance. Just when Ally thinks things can’t get any more confusing, her boss is acting funny around her at the Reference Desk, plus she has to deal with stink bombs, birthday parties, a meddling mother, and a crying circulation clerk. This is not a novel that only librarians can appreciate, although it is peppered with Dewey Decimal numbers, allusions to books and classical music, and amusing insights into relationships. If you liked Bridget Jones and you wished she would sleep around less, get a job where she uses her brain, and be more discreet in public but still be quirky, fun and totally neurotic, you will enjoy this book immensely.

Reviewed by Lissa Staley