One of those books that is more historical fiction than just fiction, this novel about a librarian and a student and his history and hers had some really captivating moments, many of them towards the end, but felt like a slog through a lot of it. It may just be that I’m not interested enough in literary history and/or the poetics of long doomed relationships but I found all the frosty characters that inhabited this book really tough to understand and get behind. The book is wonderfully written and probably better for someone who wasn’t me.