Mobile Library by David Whitehouse
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
An enjoyable read with some testing of one’s credulity. The central character, Bobby Nusku, a twelve-year-old boy, lives unhappily with his father and his father’s girlfriend. He is bullied at school where he has one friend who has a plan to turn into a cyborg to better be able to protect his friend Bobby. This leads to a series of escapades involving broken limbs. Ultimately the cyborg-boy, Sunny, moves away leaving Bobby once again friendless.
When Bobby witnesses a disabled girl who lives near him being bullied by the same bullies who have bullied him, he starts to get to know her (Rosa) and her mother(Val). Val works as a cleaner of the mobile library and accompanying her allows Bobby to borrow and read books which feed his imagination. This is one of the two main ideas of the narrative: how stories form us and give us maps for living. The other is what defines the concept of ‘family’. The book has a number of negative pictures of “real” families (families based on biological ties) and presents choosing who is in one’s family as an alternative to unsatisfatory familial relationships.
There is a strong sense of old-fashioned children’s adventure stories to the second half of the book which is a roadtrip up to Scotland and down to the south coast of England and implausible plot development but it is fun to read.