The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

I love Jojo Moyes. Like many people I was introduced to her writing with the novel Me Before You. I became immediately attached to Louisa Clark, mainly because I felt that Moyes had created her character by stepping inside my head! My husband was paralysed due to MS and when I fell in love with him he was in a similar wheelchair to Will, with the same interests and charismatic spirit. Sadly, I lost him in 2007 and I have read Moyes’ follow up novels and found her depiction of grief and moving forward intelligent, moving and real. 

The Giver of Stars is a different type of novel. It has the historical setting of the Depression in rural Kentucky. In a town where the Van Cleeve family own the mines where most people work and levels of rural poverty are high. African-Americans are still subject to segregation and while middle class women are expected to stay home and know their place, women in poorer families are working hard while trying their best to feed and look after ever-growing families. Into this setting comes Alice, the English bride of the heir to the mining fortune, Bennet Van Cleeve. Bennet is handsome and considerate, and their marriage seems to start well but once they reach the family home things change. Bennet lives with his father, after the death of his mother and the house is still being run to her exacting standards. Alice finds she has little to do. The house is full of her late mother-in-laws ornaments and china dolls, and Mr Van Cleeve doesn’t like anything to be out of it’s normal place. More worrying is the change in Bennet now they are home, despite showing some desire at the beginning, the proximity to his father is affecting their sex life. Several months down the line their marriage is still unconsummated and Mr Van Cleeve keeps hinting about grandchildren, adding to the pressure.

When a town meeting is called to discuss President Roosevelt’s initiative to get the rural poor reading, Alice senses an outlet for her energy. Margery O’Hare will head up the initiative. She is an outspoken and self-sufficient women who doesn’t listen to the opinion of anyone else, particularly men. She opens a door for Alice, out of the claustrophobic Van Cleeve household, into the wild forests of Kentucky. Alice learns to ride a mule, and along with Margery and two other local women she sets out as a librarian for the Packhorse Library. At first, rural locals are suspicious of an Englishwoman coming to the door offering them books, but soon Alice finds a way in and starts to be trusted. She also finds she likes the open air, the smells of the forest and singing of the birds. There is also the freedom to be in more casual dress and the camaraderie she is building up with her fellow librarians. She is close to Margery and when she confides about her marriage, Margery loans her a book she has been sneaking out with the novels and recipes. It is an instruction book on married love and Margery has been loaning it to poor women on her rounds who are inundated with children and need educating about sex. Alice takes the book home and a series of events are set in motion that change not only the Van Cleeve household, but the whole town.

Mr Van Cleeve is determined to deal with Margery O’Hare and vows to destroy the Packhorse
Library altogether. Margery is sure that a devastating flood has more behind it than high rainfall and suspects the mines. She has left herself vulnerable with what Van Cleeve sees as transgressive behaviour: she is exposed as having a relationship out of wedlock, she has hired an African-American woman who used to run the coloured library and she is encouraging townswomen to take control of their own lives. She seems impervious to other people’s disapproval so what lengths will he have to go to in order to stop her?

Meanwhile, Alice starts to fall into a friendship with Frank who helps out at the library by chopping wood, putting up shelves and being a general handyman. They bond over poetry and spend hours talking and working side by side in the library building. The other librarians have seen what’s happening, but Alice doesn’t seem to realise this man is falling in love with her.

I loved this book. I was on holiday when reading and I stayed in my holiday cottage for two days to read it. It is beautifully written and researched, with characters I fell in love with. Moyes manages to capture the tensions of the Depression, depicting rural poverty, domestic abuse, and the rise of feminine power. New attitudes towards race, feminism as well as marriage and sex come up against old money and old values in a tragic way. I found myself desperate for the progressive characters and attitudes to prevail and it was this that built the tension and kept me reading till 2am! Real, romantic and simply great storytelling. An absolute must read and perhaps her best novel to date.