The Personal Librarian

The Personal Librarian Book Review By Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray 

It happened again. The Personal Librarian is never a book I would have picked up or chosen for myself as far as historical fiction goes. 

Now, I like historical fiction. Anything about ancient Rome or Greece I will absolutely devour. Early 1900’s New York isn’t exactly my cup of tea on the other hand. Through extraneous motivations, I found a copy of this novel in my hand and a requirement to read it. 

Honestly, for a Good Morning America Book Club pick, I expected more. 

The story follows Belle da Costa Greene, born Belle Marion Greener, the second eldest daughter of the first Black graduate of Harvard and a civil rights advocate in 20th century America. 

The story follows Belle as she becomes the personal librarian to the enigmatic, larger than life J.P Morgan, and aids him in his desire to accrue and create a rare book, manuscript, and artwork collection for the Pierpont Morgan Library. 

Of course, this wouldn’t be possible if they knew she was Black. It’s only possible because Belle is living in this racially unfair and hostile world as a white-passing woman with no ties to her father and a made-up story of having ancestry to a Portuguese grandmother in order to explain her slightly darker skin. 

The story begins in the year 1905 and spans all the way until 1924, with the addition of the epilogue that takes place in March of 1948. 

A politically fraught era, Belle lived in a cruel world where the true nature of her identity would never have allowed her to live and achieve the aspirations she was capable of due to bigotry and racism. 

For a book with such an inspiring and capable main character and an incredibly charged environment, you would think The Personal Librarian would be relentlessly engaging, deeply meaningful, and a riveting experience to consume. 

Unfortunately, I found it quite boring. 

From start to finish, the book was droll despite the co-authors attempting to make it entertaining and educational. Belle as a main character was as flat as a board. 

You might find this hard to believe, but I found it to be the case in my reading experience. Other than being a workaholic, shallowly debating the issue of her identity, being in love with rare manuscripts, and seeking a connection, there wasn’t much to her. 

Supposedly Belle’s family was inherently important to her and the catalyst for most of her choices, but we rarely see them and none of them were standalone characters in their own right except for Mama, who came across as harsh most of the time and not very likable. 

Belle’s other driving factors included her attraction and romance with J.P. Morgan himself and another art collector named Bernard Berenson. While Belle found herself attracted to Mr. Morgan throughout her tenure as his personal librarian, nothing of huge consequences happened between them. 

However, the same could not be said for Mr. Berenson, whom Belle gave to herself completely and was destroyed in the end by his non-committal actions, selfishness, and betrayal. 

You would think the romances would be spicy, but they were anything but. Belle seemed to always find herself drawn to white,  powerful men more than three times her age (and I abhor drastic disparities in age and power dynamics) and the romance itself was cheesy and predictable. I knew the moment I read about Bernard that their romance would end in a cataclysmic disaster. I was right. 

A lot of other names are tossed around, but truly, none of them were characterized very well or fleshed out in any important way. I think the authors wanted to include as many historical names and titles as possible, but it meant little to me without a history lesson. Instead it came across as wasted potential and more like name dropping for the sake of it. 

You would imagine that the driving force of the book would be Belle’s identity crisis between her being a Black woman pretending to be a white woman. And while this issue comes up over and over and over again, it is always the same thing every single time. 

Belle fears that she will be discovered. She’s saddened that this is the world she must live in. She essentially forgets about it for the rest of the chapter and lives out as Belle de Costa Greene. Rinse and repeat. Every. Single. Chapter. 

No growth comes forth from this whatsoever. The tension of this secret builds and builds and builds and you expect, as a reader, some kind of eventual reckoning. None ever comes. 

All we get as a reader is Belle reuniting with her father for a single chapter, a man who left her as a child to pursue civil rights, and who essentially tells her that she has the choice to remain white and that it is not a betrayal. It is not a fair choice and that he hopes, one day, that her true background can be revealed without fear of discrimination and hatred. 

I understand that this book is the eventual reckoning. The world now knows that Belle de Costa Greene was actually born Belle Marion Greener, a Black woman, and rewards and cheers her amazing accomplishments. However, in the actual story, we never get this reckoning and it deflates the tension and stakes of the experience overall.

Belle de Costa Greene was a real woman that handled a divided world in the best way she could. The authors took some liberties that make this historical fiction, but as a whole, this story didn’t make for a great book to read. Belle de Costa Greene is amazing, and she should be seen as such, but I think this would have been better as a biography. 

This tale didn’t lend itself well to a full blown nearly 400-paged novel. The book was more of a history lesson on an Italian renaissance painter or a social issue in 1915 than it was a character driven novel on identity, race, and choice. 

Because of this, I found it interesting, but a disappointment story-wise. If it was advertised as a historical account of the life of Belle de Costa Greene with an emphasis on art, history, and politics, that would be one thing. 

But the authors try to squeeze in things like romance, family, friendship, and characterization—all of which falls flat because the history and art dominates everything else in the story so completely. 

As a biography, this book makes sense. If you cut out the liberties both authors take in order to make this a compelling read, the novel essentially follows the formula of a biography anyway. 

However, they thought it would make a great narrative and it just…doesn’t. The story is about an intelligent, competent, successful woman that everyone believed to be white until now. 

But the story itself doesn’t have any particular climaxes that makes this an appealing read. It lacks stakes, tension, real conflict, characterization, and personal development. 

For someone like me, a very character-driven reader, this book was hard to swallow due to its very nature of and the history, culture, art, and politics of the time weren’t enough to keep me engaged until the very end. 

Recommendation: Unless you're a history major that will fangirl over every name mentioned in this book, put it down and just pick up a biography on Belle de Costa Greene instead. It will give you the same delivery without any of the useless fluff. 

Score: 5/10