Free Library of Unrequited Love by Sophie Divry

and love inside her, spent the next five years writing
The Mandarins
, five years, her best book, shelfmark FR BEA … But what can I do, I’m just a cockroach. Wait for Martin to arrive, then lock him in the basement one night? I’d never dare, I know that perfectly well. But why doesn’t he come and ask me questions more often? Then something might finally happen … That’s all I ask. Why does Martin just leave me alone with these damned books? Tell me, frankly, do you think a boy like him might one day actually look at me? … Poor old Simone and poor old me … No, really, I never thought culture would turn out like this. Wait, I canhear something now … Yes, they’re opening up. You can go upstairs now and get out. I’m truly sorry for what happened. But please, don’t go repeating anything I said. I feel a bit ashamed now. You mustn’t take it literally. It was just, you know, a flight of fancy. It isn’t always easy to stay put, you have to do what you can. You caught me unawares and sometimes in this prison, with all the books, something’s got to give. Yes, some days it feels like I could die down here and nobody would notice. People don’t know where the library is. They walk by without seeing me. Ungrateful lot. I’ve never got a word of thanks from Martin, my refugees, my little old men, my school dunces. Once they leave here, they forget about me. I’m stuck in my basement, while the duchesses upstairs are giggling. When I get home at night, I can’t even bring myself to read. And yet it all starts up again every day. I fall for it. The Homeric struggle. Every day, I go back into the arena. Every day I say to myself: What if he doesn’t come? What if all is lost? What good will it have been to put shelf-marks on all these books? What good will it have beento spend my entire youth in overheated libraries? Yes, what’s the point of Simone de Beauvoir and Eugène Morel if Martin doesn’t come?

SOPHIE DIVRY lives in Lyon. She likes aubergines, olive oil and her mother’s homemade jam. She hates cars, is a feminist and has a phobia about open doors. She likes swimming in the sea, lakes or rivers, but does not like buying a book without knowing what’s inside it.
The Library of Unrequited Love
is her first novel.
    SIÂN REYNOLDS is a past winner of the Scott Moncrieff Translation prize, and has translated many French writers, from Fernand Braudel to Fred Vargas. She lives in Edinburgh.