The Lions of Fifth Avenue

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-9

Chapters 10-14

Chapters 15-19

Chapters 20-24

Chapters 25-28

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Background

Historical Context: New York Then and Now

History is integral to the internal clockwork of The Lions of Fifth Avenue. Fiona Davis not only provides an intriguing glimpse into turn-of-the-century New York—its social and political movements—but she also deftly connects past and present as an interwoven series of events that inform and overlap each other. Timelines are almost irrelevant here as crimes are repeated, and ghosts from Sadie’s past return to help her solve a decades-old mystery. The common thread connecting the past and present is books, their magic, their allure, and their value, both financial and as platforms of knowledge. The “current” half of the novel is set in 1993—a pre-internet and pre-smartphone era—when books, the paper variety, were still a commodity worth stealing. Rare book theft still happens, but The Lions of Fifth Avenue considers books not only for their financial value but also as artifacts coveted for their sensory and aesthetic worth; such connoisseurs are dwindling in the wake of the digital revolution. Davis’s characters revel in the smell and feel of books, getting lost in their musty narratives.

History is also important in the way that it shapes the characters, particularly Laura, who is swept up in a tide of social change. In 1913, the women’s suffrage movement was a storm waiting to be unleashed. New York state passed a Constitutional amendment granting women “full suffrage” four years later (Kelly, Marta, “Women’s Suffrage,” New York State Library, 2 November, 2021). Women living a defiant, bohemian lifestyle were accepted in New York’s Greenwich Village when they were shunned uptown. Laura basks in the social and sexual freedom of the women’s movement, finding a camaraderie and kinship there that she never finds with Jack. As a living relic of the past, Laura looks to a progressive future to nurture and empower her. Sadie, as a curator of the past, looks backward in time, delving into its secrets for her livelihood. In this way, past and present meet, suggesting that history, rather than a discreet series of isolated events, is a web, its various strands linking history’s actors and enlightening them along the way.

Cultural Context: New York Public Library, Iconic Landmark

Part of New York City’s cultural legacy is its art and architecture, and the New York Public Library is iconic on both accounts. A prominent example of the Beaux-Arts style, the library opened its doors in 1911, housing more than one million volumes along 75 miles of shelves. The library’s art and architecture converge beautifully in the building’s design—the grand reading room with its vaulted ceiling and arched windows, the eight tiers of stacks below the main level, and the twin lions standing guard on Fifth Avenue—all of which play a central role in the narrative. Davis dwells reverentially on such details—the elegant staircases, the marble floors, the figures carved into the wooden tables. One archaic curiosity of the library is its system of pneumatic tubes and dumbwaiters. In fact, before cities were linked by networks of telephone lines, Manhattan used a vast system of pneumatic tubes running below the streets for transmitting information. Architectural aficionados may bemoan the abandonment of these features, but Davis uses the dumbwaiters to full effect. Harry uses one to access the library’s extensive collection of rare manuscripts. Eighty years later and taking a cue from the past, Robin uses the same strategy to reach the rare book stacks, delivering the stolen goods to one of the library’s Board of Directors.

The books themselves are also part of the library’s cultural legacy. Sadie, in an eloquent courtroom speech, argues for a harsher sentence for Robin and by extension, a greater respect for the value of rare books. First editions, she claims, are the most direct connection to the creative process of a writer, and therefore, the best link between past and present. They are the best tools that scholars and researchers have—primary sources—to construct accurate portraits of history and build upon prior knowledge. While this rationale may sound abstract and overly philosophical, people still place real, economic value on these artifacts. In 2017, $8 million worth of rare books and maps were stolen from the Oliver Room in Pittsburg’s Carnegie Library (McDade, Travis, “The Inside Story of the $8 Million Heist From the Carnegie Library,” Smithsonian, September 2020). Like real estate, the value of a book is whatever a buyer is willing to pay, and one of the central conflicts of The Lions of Fifth Avenue is between those who appreciate books for their own inherent value and those who see in them the opportunity for profit.