Colby College associate professor and Portland resident Sarah Braunstein brings a Nabokovian touch to her second novel, “Bad Animals.” By turns hilarious and chilling, knowing and mysterious, the book is the story of a middle-aged librarian caught in the grips of literary, erotic and probably other obsessions. Maeve Cosgrove loves the library in her small Maine town with a burning passion, feeding her love of literature in part by organizing author visits.
The cultural coordinator position she’d created for herself didn’t come with a raise, but it puts Maeve in fleeting touch with presenting authors, the likes of Richard Russo, Elizabeth Strout and Richard Ford. “Bad Animals” By Sarah Braunstein W.W.
Norton, 304 pages $27.99 Everything seems to be clicking along nicely until Maeve is called to her boss’s office and told there has been a complaint against her for allegedly spying on two teenagers making out in the mezzanine bathroom. Maeve is shocked at the accusation, made by a teen patron named Libby.
Maeve responds with indignation, but she also develops a probably unhealthy interest in her accuser, signaled by a chapter containing nothing more than “Libby” written hundreds of times, a la Bart Simpson’s blackboard or Jack Nicholson’s typewritten pages in “The Shining.” As a library investigation ensues, Maeve is invited to take her mind off matters by traveling with her husband, Jack, to Ohio on business, followed by an extended stay with his ailin.
