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What the critics say

The heightening tension throughout their haphazard road trip from Missouri to Vermont is exhilarating... This astonishingly assured novel knows precisely where it's heading ... the reader is breathless with hope that Lucy and Ian will find a happy ending.
- Daily Mail

A tale of the inspirational power of children's books...The Borrower is a tremendously entertaining read.
- Financial Times

The Borrower's out and out charm is heightened by its furious, righteous heart and conviction that books offer salvation and hope when life is messy and near-unbearable
- Marie Claire

Funny, charming debut...it's a lovely, inventive novel, smart but not annoyingly wise-cracking, about the power of books and stories to sustain people when life becomes impossible... warmly demonstrates that love can come in different and unexpected guises.
- Metro

The sheer zest and care with which this book is written, as well as the emphasis on children's literature, set it apart... Makkai is an engaging writer.
- Guardian

Rarely is a first novel as smart and engaging and learned and funny and moving as The Borrower.
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Makkai takes several risks in her sharp, often witty text, replete with echoes of children's classics from Goodnight Moon to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, as well as more ominous references to Lolita...the moving final chapters affirm the power of books to change people's lives even as they acknowledge the unbreakable bonds of home and family. Smart, literate and refreshingly unsentimental.
- Kirkus

Rebecca Makkai takes all the best features of the children's books her characters love and sweeps them straight into her first novel: their warmth, their vibrancy, their joy at setting their inventions in motion and following them wherever they might lead. She is a generous, original, and arresting writer, and any story she wants to tell, I want to listen.
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She's a great writer...a wonderfully entertaining story packed with moral conundrums and beautiful writing
- The Bookseller

Ian is a little star. His many sayings and observations that he'll burst out with are endearing - and often funny. It's clear that Lucy is smitten by her favourite 'borrower.'
- The Bookbag

This story - often fun, sometimes sad, always bookish - deals with big issues...Rebecca Makkai's literary debut will appeal to young adults and readers of adult literary fiction
- We Love This Book

In Makkai's picaresque first novel, Lucy, a 26-year-old children's librarian, 'borrows' her favorite patron, bright, book-loving 10-year-old Ian, after his fundamentalist parents enroll him in a program meant to 'cure' his nascent homosexuality.
- Booklist