The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson. Hachette, 2022. by Jackie McMillan

Book Review: The Little Wartime Library

Historical fiction writer Kate Thompson provides a fast-paced read which provides insight into life in London's Underground during World War 2.

This book is a word-of-mouth success at South Dunedin Page Turners (which meets at 1.30pm on the second Wednesday of each month at the South Dunedin Library). Two of us brought along The Little Wartime Libraryto share at the same session, and others have read it since. It is a page-turning triumphant novel about overcoming adversity in the harshest of times, and the importance of access to books and reading, for education as well as escape, and the instrumental role that libraries play in creating communities.

The novel is based on the true story of the Bethnal Green Library, which after being bombed on the first night of The Blitz, relocated its surviving collections into the unfinished Bethnal Green Tube Station. The library then offered its lending services to the public from this requisitioned station, where it was also much closer to the local community; several thousand people lived in this tube station for the duration of the war. (There are notes provided at the back of the book on the real librarians and their library.)

Kate Thompson provides lots of little details, including references to popular books at the time, that help depict how life was for those living and working underground, and also how it felt above ground in London's East End during The Blitz and beyond.

The novel has two main characters, librarian and widow 25-year-old Clara Button, and her troubled best friend and library assistant, Ruby Munroe, with the plot structured equally around each young woman and their library. It becomes evident that both women's lives have been severely affected by events in Bethnal Green, including the bombing of the library, and the hushed-up Bethnal Green tube disaster, with each woman unsuccessfully deploying different coping tactics. Supporting characters include children living in the tube station, known as the 'tube rats', and two sisters, Marie and Beatty, who have escaped the German occupied Channel Islands. Then there are the men, American G.I. Eddie, and the conscientious objector and ambulance worker Billy, who provide the romantic interest in the novel.

In a separate project, Kate Thompson interviewed 100 librarians, one for each year since the Bethnal Green Library opened in 1922. Each chapter in The Little Wartime Library begins with a quote from a current library worker, and these quotes are often linked to the action in the story. The novel begins and ends in 2020 in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, with one of the characters revisiting the Bethnal Green Tube Station with her daughters. The message these quotes and the modern-day beginning and ending make explicit is that libraries are as embattled today as ever, and not just by literal bombs. The novel makes equally clear that libraries are still vital for communities for the very same reasons they were in The Little Wartime Library.

In a heartening footnote to this story, Bethnal Green Library along with another in the same library system were threatened with closure last year, but after a petition and letters to the mayor, the council reversed this decision, and the libraries were saved.

Visit https://bethnalgreenlondon.co.uk/public-library-history/ and https://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/local-council/tower-hamlets-library-closures-stopped-7804570 to find out more about the library and its most recent battle.

Thanks to my brother Tony for the use of his British World War Two memorabilia in these images.