Review: Jojo Moyes’ The Giver of Stars is a powerful story about the importance of female friendship

It all began with the thwack of a book.

Jojo Moyes sets the stage for The Giver of Stars with a dramatic showdown between a young librarian named Margery O'Hare and moonshiner Clem McCullough. And with the sound of a book striking a person's skull, the sound of a gun going ogg and a dramatic escape on horseback, readers are brought back three months earlier - where this time, we begin to meet the Packhorse Librarians. Instead of the singular romance story like in her hit Me Before You, Moyes uses The Giver of Stars to stress the importance of friendship. Set in Eastern Kentucky during the Great Depression, the book follows the Packhorse Librarians - an unlikely group of women (and, eventually, close friends) who go against the norms of society and venture into the mountains to deliver books to the people who live there. It is based on a real-life program launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor. The remote town of Baileyville is far from what Alice expected when Bennett Van Cleve, a handsome American, came to Surrey and their whirlwind romance whisked her away to the other side of the Atlantic. She finds the small town life stifling and the town has been far from welcoming. Not to mention the fact that her husband is favourite work of her; and her father-in-law - with a hidden violent streak - looms large over their life. So when the pack horse project comes recruiting, Alice volunteers herself as a way to escape their home - quicker than either Bennett or his father can blink. It's there that she meets Margery O'Hare, the daughter of a notorious felon who the rest of the town is keen to forget. The library soon grows, with three other librarians joining the project - which provides the townsfolk and those beyond with inspiration and escape. Moyes manages to make the women of the Packhorse Library feel just as much like old friends as Me Before You's Louisa Clarke - and you want to root for each of them to get that 'happily ever after' kind of ending. Especially the central protagonists, Alice and Margery, who go to extreme lengths to defend the library as the town begins to turn against them. And the descriptions of their travels into the mountains, in particular their visits to the families outside Baileyville, are so vivid that you can picture the beautiful plains and rolling hills; and the affection for the families practically jump off the page. All in all, The Giver of Stars is an incredible celebration of female friendship and the power of reading - and the perfect book to curl up with as the autumn nights get colder and colder.

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