eBook
English language
Published July 18, 2023 by Penguin Publishing Group.
No one knows Margo’s real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges.
That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo’s subtly sinister edge, and watches her carefully. When a patron’s death in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo’s mysterious past, Patricia can’t resist digging deeper—even as this new fixation becomes all-consuming.
Taut and compelling, How Can I Help You explores the dark side of human nature and the dangerous pull of artistic obsession as these “transfixing dual female narrators” …
No one knows Margo’s real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges.
That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo’s subtly sinister edge, and watches her carefully. When a patron’s death in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo’s mysterious past, Patricia can’t resist digging deeper—even as this new fixation becomes all-consuming.
Taut and compelling, How Can I Help You explores the dark side of human nature and the dangerous pull of artistic obsession as these “transfixing dual female narrators” (Kimberly McCreight) hurtle toward a stunning climax.
This was perfect fun for me. Atrocious characters, though that’s not as immediately apparent with Patricia.
Laura Sims’s novel, How Can I Help You?, took me right back to the handful of years when I worked at a public library in a small town. As their cat-and-mouse game escalates, Margo and Patricia take turns telling us about patrons arguing over fines, internet-averse people with inane questions, lonely people cornering them to talk their ears off, that one guy who wants to look at porn in public for reasons you never want to think too hard about, and the lady who swears that she returned a book to the book drop and that it’s the library’s fault she has fines. But, for once, the strangest person in the library isn’t one of the patrons; it’s one of the staff...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
