Irish author Evie Woods has written a novel that is not read, but experienced. "The Lost Library" is a hymn to women who have dared to live differently, to books that breathe like people, and to memories that neither time nor oblivion erase.
This is a story about the love that can be found between the yellow pages of a book, but also about the pain that lies behind women who did not obey the rules of their time. Three characters – a girl who escapes to Paris in the 1920s, a raped woman seeking salvation in modern-day Dublin, and a rare book scholar – are connected through a vanished bookstore and a mysterious manuscript.
Woods brings a narrative that moves through time and space, but remains deeply rooted in the heart of every reader who has ever loved a book more than reality, who has dreamed of getting lost in a bookstore, who has found true love between the lines, who has considered reading as a portal to disconnect from the world, or who has dedicated his entire life to the literary world.
Here, books are not just objects – they are friends, witnesses, comfort. And sometimes, the only way to save yourself is to read.
This novel is for all those who have wanted a bookstore as a home, a book as a friend, and a story as a salvation. “The Lost Library” is not just to be read, but to be listened to, to place an ear on the page and catch that sigh that comes from the depths of lost and forgotten books. Because perhaps, if we listen carefully, they will tell us the stories that were denied, the lives that were never written, and the women who stood up for themselves, in the face of a world that wanted to suppress them.
