©2025 Fable Group Inc.
3.5 

The Borrower

By Rebecca Makkai
The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

In this delightful, funny, and moving first novel, a librarian and a young boy obsessed with reading take to the road.

Lucy Hull, a young children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, finds herself both a kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, ten- year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home. The precocious Ian is addicted to reading, but needs Lucy's help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has enrolled Ian in weekly antigay classes with celebrity Pastor Bob. Lucy stumbles into a moral dilemma when she finds Ian camped out in the library after hours with a knapsack of provisions and an escape plan. Desperate to save him from Pastor Bob and the Drakes, Lucy allows herself to be hijacked by Ian. The odd pair embarks on a crazy road trip from Missouri to Vermont, with ferrets, an inconvenient boyfriend, and upsetting family history thrown in their path. But is it just Ian who is running away? Who is the man who seems to be on their tail? And should Lucy be trying to save a boy from his own parents?

Download the free Fable app

app book lists

Stay organized

Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
app book recommendations

Build a better TBR

Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
app book reviews

Rate and review

Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
app comments

Curate your feed

Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities
app book lists

Stay organized

Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
app book recommendations

Build a better TBR

Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
app book reviews

Rate and review

Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
app comments

Curate your feed

Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities

480 Reviews

3.5
“Makkai’s The Borrower is the foil to Nabokov’s Lolita I never knew I wanted. From the perspective of Lucy Hull, an unreliable narrator in her own right but a children’s librarian with good intentions, befriends a precocious-and-maybe-gay-10-year-old boy named Ian who spends most of his time asking Lucy for book recommendations at her library. She discovers his mother is an evangelical who may have suspicions about his sexuality, sending him to a pastor who lives to de-gay people in the name of God. Lucy’s potentially misguided instincts leads her to kidnap Ian on a 10-day road trip to protect him from his circumstances, and she intellectualizes that she is at Ian’s whim and the kidnapping was his own orchestration. She’s faced with her own quest for identity and meaning, raising ethical questions about agency and her morally ambiguous behavior and the power of people and books. Makkai’s frequent references to books (including Lolita) through Lucy’s profession as a librarian become self-referential, echoing The Borrower’s own themes and characters. It was an enjoyable, stressful read that doesn’t fully come together until the last few pages, but it was worth the wait.”

About Rebecca Makkai

Rebecca Makkai’s stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2008, 2009, and 2010, and have appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. Makkai teaches elementary school and lives north of Chicago with her husband and two daughters.

Start a Book Club

Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!

FAQ

Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?

Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?

How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?

Do you sell physical books too?

Are book clubs free to join on Fable?

How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?

Error Icon
Save to a list
0
/
30
0
/
100
Private List
Private lists are not visible to other Fable users on your public profile.
Notification Icon
Fable uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB