Library of Brothel brings readers into a surreal wonderfully analog world of colourful characters 

Author Anakana Schofield is seen here at the non-profit artist centre the Western Front. Schofield took inspiration from the location when building a world full of colourful characters in her new novel Library of Brothel. Photo by Jason Payne /PNG

Article content

In a world full of screens and growing parasocial relationships, award-winning Vancouver author Anakana Schofield’s new novel Library of Brothel is a call to cultivate and protect human connections.

Article content

Set in a rundown, Wi-Fi free worker’s co-operative, the building is filled with workers who are offering an unplugged service of face-to-face communication. You know, IRL (in real life) conversation.

Article content

Article content

Article content

“We remain aged cheddar to the slippy-slappy slice,” says the narrator about the analogue inhabitants of the co-operative.

Article content

Article content

“This novel is a gospel according to the workers, but it’s also a gospel according to being human and having time, and seeing other people, and recognizing people’s labour, seeing people in their jobs,” said Schofield, who is a native of Ireland but has called Vancouver home for years.

Article content

Library of Brothel, by Anakana Schofield. Photo by Courtesy Knopf Canada /Courtesy Knopf Canada

Article content

A love letter to labour, the book’s characters/workers/a kind of Greek chorus are identified by the names of the rooms they work out of, which include: Single Man with a Table Room, The Human Car Wash Room, Giraffe Room, Scrabble Room, Virginia Woolf Room, History of Public Transit Room and many, many more.

Article content

Often funny — there is a “Conniptions and Consternation Committee,” and an “Office of the Thought Warden” — the novel sees various workers engaging, and sometimes fighting, with each other while uniting over the fact that their beloved “library” may be closing as fewer clients are using their services and greedy real estate developers are hungrily circling the building.

Article content

Article content

“We have this big crisis with housing. Housing has become this horrible currency,” said Schofield. “I mean, even today, look at this ridiculous bailout for these developers. It’s just monstrous.

Article content

Article content

“Then I was thinking about within relationships we also house each other. And then, of course, in the workplace, we more than have to house each other. Of course, with the pandemic, that was all disrupted.”

Article content

In a world full of screens and parasocial relationships, the new novel Library of Brothel from Vancouver’s Anakana Schofield reminds readers of the necessity of human connection. Photo by Jason Payne /PNG

Article content

Delivered in an absurdist fashion, the novel warns of social extinction as it holds a mirror up to today’s tech-dominated, unaffordable world.

Article content

“I know that it’s kind of surreal and it’s confounding, and maybe some readers will find it overwhelming, but I guess I’ll just argue that, at this point in time, all day long, everything on the news is surreal and confounding. So, I don’t understand why art wouldn’t respond to that with that,” said Schofield, whose previous books include Malarky and Bina.

Article content

Schofield says that her job as a writer isn’t to make life easy for the reader. Instead, she hopes challenging prose will compel people to spend more time within the pages of books.