Giraffeify. Byelaws. Full-stops.

Library of Brothel
by Anakana Schofield

Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2026
$35.00 / 9780735273245

Reviewed by Marcie McCauley

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The workers in Library of Brothel despair, sometimes. “Out there, you think anyone cares about us in here?” Scrabble Woman asks, “Do they even know we exist?” Her work in the Scrabble Room has reinforced the idea that it’s hard to care: “For twenty-four hours pay attention to everyone inside some place you’ve never stepped and see how long your concern can last.” To test this theory, Anakana Schofield presents her fourth novel: an intricate story about neither a library nor a brothel, which includes at least one giraffe.

Operations at the facility are extensive and evolve to reflect their clientele’s changing needs; newcomers—including readers—can orient themselves with various guideposts—“Signage dominates the space.” On the page, numerous headers create the cumulative effect of an employee handbook. (Was it designed by someone who’s just discovered the image menu? Or—several someones, each of whom has contributed an element of personal importance?) There’s always something to read, something to attend to—“adverts in different languages, instructions, demands, warnings, requests” are abundant, covering entire walls. 

Typical workplace concerns emerge. Some departments over-perform and shoulder more than their share of responsibility, while other departments call in sick and assume additional work will be absorbed without complaint. Every worker has their own room, but concerns about profitability are global. Some problems appear unique, though conflicts-of-interest proliferate in any workplace: “It has been suggested,” for instance, “that St. Francis could relocate his room to the Joan of Arc corridor, but one of the Joans is allergic to dander and people often visit St Francis with sick bunnies and deranged cats.” 

Special accommodations must be made for workers who provide unique services: “Much has been done to enhance and giraffeify the area around the Giraffe Room.” The shrubbery is, apparently, absent: this calls for an order of five artificial olive trees. Creative problem-solving is valued (if minimal expense is incurred—these artificial trees require only a single outlay compared to the cost of growing food). Throughout the organization, innovation is prized: “It becomes very dull to know exactly what someone is likely to say.” The business warns: “Don’t be boring. We don’t hire full-stops in here.”

But there’s little hiring: this is the era of erosion, termination. The cost of living is high and the value of employees is low: “Workers, meanwhile, have started replying I can’t afford to be alive when asked How Are You?”Conditions have reached a crisis point, where new “byelaws” result in new firing policies: “Where a serious charge of impersonation is suspected or proven, dismissal without notice or informing will follow.”Readers might choose to reread this, but policy-makers hope employees won’t. (It’s not quiet-quitting, when it’s quiet-firing.) 

Always weary and sometimes embittered, most of the workers do their best. Schofield rewards them (and readers) with humour. So the “Puritan Bundling-Board Room” goes “on a tear with his wood-block personality and mace-club of a tongue.” And faced with too many complaints, the Giraffe Room promptly responds: “Shut up and self-fellate. (Oh, look, I see your neck’s too short.)” And rooms that had previously been under-performing gain a new importance (like the “Bitches-Gather-Their-Britches” Room). 

Ideas—about work and worth, knowledge and influence—infuse Library of Brothel. For characters, there are increasingly more risks than benefits. The sadness that accumulates when someone is “going to work only to be held hostage with no useful purpose. She worried it might give workers ideas on holding each other hostage for kicks or clicks.” For readers, distractions and agency flutter off-stage, bigger ideas erupting like font changes: “The microfibre cloth swipe of capital. The ism of removal.” But how do we talk about serious things when we can barely manage to think of them, even for a moment.  

Does anything good come of talking? After all: “We are inclined towards our version of the narrative.” Think of all the words “Bayesian Trees had to use to say absolutely nothing.” If we might as well say nothing, perhaps we might as well not exist: if we cease to make an effort, do we cease to exist? “For if we are no more, we will be neither strange nor otherwise. We will not be at all. We will have been. Just as you have been briefly in our building living and reading with us.” (But think of the word “giraffeify”—what joys its conjugation might bring.)

Perhaps Library of Brothel is only a prelude to extinction. It’s the first book in a new triptych, but it’s the author’s persistent search for meaning that truly connects the stories she writes. There are direct connections too (sometimes only a footnote), but it’s her characters’ rages and sorrows that unify Schofield‘s work. Even though none of them actually wants to be where they are, they inhabit that space fully. Our Woman in 2012’s Malarky: “She’s between regret and resignation, a nowhere in particular spot.” Martin John in his 2015 eponymous tale: “It’s uncomfortable. Time to shift the cushions behind your back.” And 2019’s Bina ends with a four-page long index of Warnings. For anyone uncomfortable with Library of Brothel, one could say readers were warned. 

Out there, does anyone care about a novelist sitting alone in her room, offering “pointless services along the road to nowhere”? Or—a reader? It’s possible all this is a bunch of malarky. But, if you can sustain your concern for a couple hundred pages: “It’s beautiful when it all makes sense, so it is. Occasionally it makes sense, just for a moment.” (That’s from Malarky.) Schofield’s latest requires hard work, but it remunerates at time-and-a-half.

[Editor’s note: In support of her book Anakana Schofield will host a reading and talk in Vancouver on Saturday, June 13, 3-4pm, Western Front. In October, she will appear at writers’ festivals in Vancouver and Victoria.]

Marcie McCauley writes and reads in Tkaronto (Toronto) and N’Swakamok (Sudbury) on the homelands of Indigenous peoples—including the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabeg, and Wendat—land still inhabited by their descendants. Her writing has been published in American, British, and Canadian magazines and journals, in print and online. [Editor’s note: Marcie previously reviewed Endling in BCR.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster