Loan Ranger

Dating to 1898, the unusual building at the centre of Anakana Schofield’s latest novel is old by Vancouver standards. Situated in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, the fantastical Library of Brothel represents an increasingly threatened world view, one that values expertise, rejects conformity, and eschews the internet.

The Library of Brothel is a “human library,” meaning that experts staff an impressive collection of themed rooms, available to be booked for a fee and each bearing a hyperspecific name. A small sampling: the Men Recovering from Being Born in the 1950s Room, the Astrology for Houseplants and Horses Room, and the Dreams, Despair and Dismissal: The History of Pakistan’s Cricket Team Room. Like Jorge Luis Borges’s Library of Babel, with its possibly infinite spaces, this is a structure with elastic dimensions. As the narrative unfolds, more and more rooms are revealed, including the Thirty Years’ War Rooms, which take up an entire corridor. Visitors can...