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Ex-Libris

3.16 of 5 stars 3.16 · rating details · 690 ratings · 96 reviews

A cryptic summons to a remote country house launches Isaac Inchbold, a London bookseller and antiquarian, on an odyssey through seventeenth-century Europe. Charged with the task of restoring a magnificent library destroyed by the war, Inchbold moves between Prague and the Tower Bridge in London, his fortunes—and his life—hanging on his ability to recover a missing manuscri...more

Paperback, 392 pages

Published May 28th 2002 by Penguin Books (first published 1998)

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Apr 22, 2013 John rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: No one

Recommended to John by: The cover

The author of Brunelleschi's Dome might have done better. The comparison of this overwrought intellectual mystery to Eco's The Name of the Rose is sad misinformation for the reader. Anachronisms and the repetitive use of "rumours" and "gossip" to give information about far too complicated a plot are distracting, and the action drawing the, by now weary, reader on is not credible. Read this "Dome" and then reread Eco.

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Nov 04, 2012 Anne rated it 3 of 5 stars

Started out fabulously, brilliantly intriguing, great characters and premise into which I was immediately drawn only to have what could have been a fabulous story become more and more bogged down in the exceedingly heavy dragging weight of History - with a capital 'H'. The author, Ross King is a brilliant historian, I loved 'Bruneleschi's Dome' and I'm sure I'm going to love his new book 'Leonardo and the Last Supper' but Ex Libris floundered and eventually sank under the weight of a far too com...more

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Oct 10, 2009 sean rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: restoration

I wanted to like this book more than I ultimately did. It's set in an interesting time period, and it makes good us of all kinds of cool 17th century stuff, from London Bridge to alchemy, to Galileo to the search for longitude to Elizabeth of Bohemia. The basic idea is that the narrator, Inchbold, is hired to find a missing rare book, and in doing so is plunged into an arcane political conspiracy.

And the intricate plot is very interesting, if you like that kind of thing (I do). The trouble is, t...more

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Apr 23, 2009 Colleen rated it 1 of 5 stars

This is a rare example of a book that starts out well and gets more and more boring and confusing as it goes on. The author wrote non-fiction before this and it shows in Ex-Libris. He appears to have gotten carried away with his research and recounts the entire history of the world up until 1660. He drops names and events and years and I sat there scratching my head and saying, "Huh?" And I like history! The one bright spot in this book is the character, Isaac Inchbold. He is a feisty old man wh...more

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Nov 03, 2011 trav rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-about-books, fiction

I really wanted to like this book. It had all the right pieces to be a great story. There's a book seller, Bookman's row, mystery, lost manuscripts, etc. But it just didn't grab me.

I realize there are a bazillion folks out there who love this book. But by the end, I was just ready for it to be over.

There are two stories moving forward in this book. With each chapter you're either in one or the other. Maybe it was King's way of flipping back and forth that turned me off. Or the way he waits so lo...more

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Jul 27, 2008 Obisbooks rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Fun historical novel about books and political intrigues set during the English Restoration. A bit confusing at times (but that was because I wasn't clear about the historical events) but engrossing, I read it in 2 days (it was also too humid to do anything else). Can't say too much without giving things away, but Mr. Inchbald, a book dealer, is hired by Althea Marchmont to find a very rare old book that was taken from her family, the Labyrinth of the World.

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Jan 21, 2009 Rebecca rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: no one except the very patient and forgiving

This book was so mind-numbingly boring that I couldn't bring myself to get past page 56. The premise is that a bookseller/collector of rare books in 17th century London is asked by a once-wealthy heiress to restore her grand library to its former glory. There's a murder or two involved, and some arcane books, and some potential drama lurking around the corner. But that's just what I got from the back cover of the book. The only thing that actually happened in 56 pages of the book was some clumsy...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Joanie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery

I wanted to like this book more than I did, as it was steeped in 17th-century literary history. Alas, the plot was unwieldy, the obscure references didn't really pull together as a common thread, and my suspense-of-disbelief began to fray. King attempted to connect too many world issues into a mystery-thriller with chase scenes, and it kept the story from maintaining the tone and pace set in the beginning of the book. Also, and this may be purely personal preference, but I often find myself less...more

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Apr 20, 2013 Naz K. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone on earth who had the misfortune of trusting my literary preferences, really.

Shelves: 2013, haha-no, books-of-therapeutic-nature, will-probably-re-read-again

The only thing I can say about this book — upon finishing it at this very moment — quite possibly lies between squealing into a pillow and weeping in disbelief because it ended. It deserves a sixth star — or rather, all the stars out of the any given number — irritating amount of tiny hearts, what is left of my soul after it was torn apart by silly Restoration bibliophiles, and my inexistent, hypothetical first-born whom I could possibly trade for the reassurance of a sequel to this book. This w...more

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Jul 07, 2011 Jason Edwards rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: "book" lovers

Recommended to Jason by: critics who read The Shadow of the Wind

Boring. I'm sorry, but it was tough for me to get through this. Essentially a detective novel, which is why I managed to finish, as I wanted to see the mystery resolved. But it was just so thick with history, rife with the kind of esoteria that only a historian could enjoy. So some people will really enjoy this one. Whereas some folks read for plot, and some read for the clever language, Ex Libris is a novel full of stuff. That Ross King write mostly non-fiction is no surprise at all.

I only pick...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Linda rated it 1 of 5 stars

This was a very confusing book! Isaac Inchbold, a bookseller near London Bridge in Elizabethan England, is called to the home of a wealthy widow who is trying to recreate her husband’s library, which has been looted, and also attacked by bugs and water. She is looking in particular for one book, and wants the original one that her husband had owned. Isaac takes on the assignment reluctantly, but hoping to be able to earn the huge sum of money she has promised him. Coincidences begin to pile on...more

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Nov 12, 2011 Logophile rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, reviewed

I was rather disappointed by this book. A historic mystery involving a library, a mysterious woman, a swashbuckling adventurer, espionage, and secret books—how could you go wrong? Ross King manages to, though. An unexpectedly somber ending seemed totally inappropriate for the amusing, sometimes comic, story that precedes. The convoluted resolution, including the destinies of some key characters, was abruptly and unsatisfyingly explained to us like a history lesson in the final few pages. By the...more

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Jan 21, 2010 Sharon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

A byzantine adventure story set in England during the reign of Charles II. A bookseller is enlisted to find a rare manuscript which was lost during the 30 years war. Flashes back and forth between the early- and late-1600's. I had a hard time telling whether the narrator was supremely omniscient or the flashbacks were in the third-person. Touches on all the themes of the time: Protestants vs. Catholics, Spain vs. England, New World exploration, longitude, Galileo, etc. Not as "girly" as the his...more

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Feb 18, 2011 Stephanie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, historical

This review originally appeared at www.readinasinglesitting.com

Like most book lovers, I have a bit of a thing about books about anything remotely bookish: mysterious tomes, life in the stacks, binding and printing, the angsty authorial existence, and so forth. I’ll happily make a concerted effort to seek out such books, and have a rather impressive collection of these, erm, bookish books. In fact, my very favourite book of all time, Francesca Duranti’s The House on Moon Lake, is such a book, and...more This review originally appeared at www.readinasinglesitting.com

Like most book lovers, I have a bit of a thing about books about anything remotely bookish: mysterious tomes, life in the stacks, binding and printing, the angsty authorial existence, and so forth. I’ll happily make a concerted effort to seek out such books, and have a rather impressive collection of these, erm, bookish books. In fact, my very favourite book of all time, Francesca Duranti’s The House on Moon Lake, is such a book, and came into my hands after only months of searching (oddly enough, it’s a book about searching for a difficult-to-find book…). So when I happened across Ross King’s Ex Libris, which promised to be very bookish indeed, I snapped it up, and I’m rather glad I did.

Summary

The setting is 17th Century England, and our unlikely protagonist is the improbably named Isaac Inchbold, a Dickensian moniker given his club foot and disinclination to speak out unless entirely improperly done by. Widower Inchbold spends his days amongst the literary delights of his London Bridge bookshop Nonsuch Books (a name that is also portentious) doing little more than stamping, squinting, and complaining about the cold. So when Inchbold responds to the summons of a mysterious letter by heading off on a cross-country jaunt, it’s all a bit of a surprise–no doubt as much to Inchbold himself as to the reader. From this point on, Dickens takes a backseat, and notes of Umberto Eco and Edgar Allan Poe are suddenly evident in this complex vintage. Inchbold finds himself in the employ of one Lady Marchamont, a bookish and just-a-wee-bit-madcap noblewoman desperate to track down a volume known as The Labyrinth of the World, which has gone missing from her father’s impressive collection.

My thoughts

Inchbold’s journey is a fascinating one full of intrigue and scandal, gossip and hearsay, and all the bookish arcana a literary-minded reader could possibly hope to come across. It’s a cozy mystery, of course, so a degree of suspended disbelief is necessary, but King is a scholar of this era, and his knowledge of post-Cromwell England is rich and curious, lending the book a sense of felicity that might not have worked in the hands of a lesser writer. His ability to give us a sense of both city and country-manor life in this era is commendable, and the reader comes away feeling as though the setting has been perfectly evoked. Unfortunately, there are a few things that detract from the novel, and the seriousness of these will likely depending on your lenience as a reader. There’s the parallel narrative of how the book in question came to be in Marchamont’s collection, and while it’s on the whole an interesting enough tale, it seems to run long, and slows down the pace of the book overall. This issue is only compounded by the fact that the novel is exposition-heavy in the first place, and some readers may find the middle section somewhat of a slog. Other issues include the poor characterisation of the minor characters–all of whom have a very grim and dirge-like feel to them, and may well have started off as pirates in a Robert Louis Stevenson novel–which gives a sense of repetition to the novel. This repetitious feel is only augmented by Inchbold’s various efforts to hunt down his elusive charge–given that this is not the era of mobile phones and motor cars, his every effort is rather laborious.

However, whilst I was willing to overlook these few small problems given the otherwise well-written and fanciful story at hand, there’s a confounding factor that I couldn’t ignore. And that’s the fact that Dan Brown seems to have got his dirty mitts on the last fifty or so pages of this novel. While there were earlier hints that Mr Brown’s legacy had somehow leached into this otherwise fine novel (a key case in point being the bizarre chapter in which Inchbold spends several days attempting to decipher a code and employing all manner of steganographic expertise to do so–but to utterly no purpose whatsoever), the worst of this came at exactly the point at which I had to ask my boyfriend for the definition of the word “peroration” (admittedly, King’s vocabulary is far more extensive than my own). A peroration, it turns out, is where someone concludes a speech with a formal recapitulation. And this is exactly what happens during the final eighth or so of the book: between them Inchbold and Marchamont summarise exactly what has happened thus far, and Marchamont explains to Isaac the solution to the mystery that has plagued him. I hope you won’t mind the spoiler, but the words “wild goose chase” do come to mind, and I found myself wincingly recalling the end of the heinous Da Vinci Code, which also stoops to similar lows. Worse, the reason given for Marchamont’s interest in The Labyrinth of the World is exquisitely nonsensical, a fact only made worse by the fifty so pages of explanation surrounding it.

Conclusions

Ex Libris is a beautifully written volume, and has much to commend it, with King’s evocative setting and for the most part compelling narrative style pulling the reader along at a good pace. However, the secondary narrative, which isn’t essential to the plot by any means, serves to slow down the novel, and the final fifty or so pages feel rushed and out of place, leaving the reader not only confused, but frustrated as well. It’s a shame, as Ex Libris otherwise a fine novel that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I’d certainly advise readers to pick this one up–with the caveat that the ending is a disappointment.(less)

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Oct 01, 2008 Danielle rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Pluses: 1) A very interesting setting. You don't read many novels set in this time period (mid 1600s), and giving the reader a sense of place was well done. 2) You'll like this very much if you're obsessed with old books (like, when first editions of classics came out, etc.) 3) The plot wasn't wholly without merit. 4) I learned a lot of new vocab words.
Negatives: 1) Okay, it was difficult in the extreme to follow this story amid all the book facts and other "tidbits" that the author had obviousl...more

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Feb 28, 2011 Daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars

An intriguing tale in the realm of literary thrillers. King does an excellent job of bringing to life 17-century London and the world of the bookseller Inchbold, which is crucial to both caring about the story and understanding the implications raised during the course of events. Lovers of books as artifacts will delight in the minutiae of the various tomes names and the information about them that makes them special, the editions, the printers, the papers and bindings. The narrator cares about...more

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Sep 25, 2009 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars

I love historical fiction, particularly when, as in Ross King's case, a mystery is involved. Ex-Libris was a satisfying, and rewarding read for at least 300 of it's 392 pages (Paperback Edition). I have read many books involving English history, still, I feel Ex-Libris painted a picture more vividly of life in the mid-1600's.

Without giving anything away, or not much anyway, Ex-Libris is a story set in the disastrous years of and after English Reformation. There are two stories entwined together...more I love historical fiction, particularly when, as in Ross King's case, a mystery is involved. Ex-Libris was a satisfying, and rewarding read for at least 300 of it's 392 pages (Paperback Edition). I have read many books involving English history, still, I feel Ex-Libris painted a picture more vividly of life in the mid-1600's.

Without giving anything away, or not much anyway, Ex-Libris is a story set in the disastrous years of and after English Reformation. There are two stories entwined together in the story, they run parallel to eachother but are decades apart. Both stories center in the search for a missing text, one of greater value than the reader can imagine at first.

I enjoyed the introspective pace of the narrator Isaac Inchbold. His accounts of life on London Bridge were enlightening, and convincingly authentic, the sites and smells and cricks and creeks are all lushly delivered. Fans of historical fiction will lap these details up.

I wonder, however, if Ross King prefers narration to dialogue, for I felt the story was lacking in the latter, and when it did occur, it sounded versed in the same tongue as narration, every character exactly as eloquent as the next. I probably wouldn't mention such an incongruity, or even write a review for this book at all if it hadn't been for the way the book ends.

Ex-Libris is recommended in the same breath, with almost all reviewers, with the works of Umberto Eco, Arturo Perez-Reverte, and Iain Pears, which is good company no doubt. But I felt some of the comparisons are too obvious. Our hero (or, anti-hero, in Mr. Inchbold's defense he is clumsy and club-footed) spends a waning chapter on deciphering a cryptic jumble of letters he finds, and, while he does solve it's peculiar riddle, it hardly seems important. It seems, in the deja vu sense, a tribute to Umberto Eco's intricate novel Foucualt's Pendulum and little more.

The story also suffers slightly from esoteric name-dropping, not of seventeenth century personalities but of Hermetic texts from up to three hundred years previous to this story. If the reader is not familiar with the works of Cornelius Agrippa, Blaise de Vignenère, Böhmen or Fincino will that reader feel confused or muddled? No, I did not and do not know the few names I just plucked out of Ex-Libris, but I never felt I was missing intricate details of the story, I felt instead that I was trekking briskly uphill to reach a destination that I increasingly demanded better-be-worth-it with each trudging step. The book is peppered with bibliophiles, there doesn't seem to be anyone in post-Cromwell England (according to Ex-Libris) who is not extremely well read.

It is the ending that upset me the most, it is the ending that prompts me to write this review. Now, how do I do this without giving anything crucial away... It seems the last chapter was reserved to tie so loosely the hundreds of shreds that kept us plugging along. It was the most improbable finale I can think of. And in the midst of life threatening turmoil, two characters intellectually pander all the conclusions as they run for their very lives. It's more ridiculous than even that, I promise you, but I don't want to give away the preposterous details.

Here is the worst part, and this is safe territory, for it is mentioned on the very last page but does not give anything dreadful away. The narrator sits in his bookshop on London Bridge many years later in the Epilogue, and he mentions the passing years by saying "...even now, in the Year of Our Lord 1700..." and all the while he is staring out a window of his bookshop on London Bridge! (I know I repeated that twice, but I had to). Now, I was flabbergasted when I read that, insulted and disgusted. Most any amateur of English history, I am by no means an expert, knows that the Great Fire that devastated London (known also as "London's Fire") started in a bakery on London Bridge in 1666. September First, I just looked it up to make sure. The fire, fueled by an unusual early morning wind, tore apart London. It is disturbing that Ross King, who knows much more about
Seventeenth-Century London than I am likely to ever know, by-passed this alarming detail.

The question remains, after all of my directionless rambling, do I recommend this book or not? I do. I think the details about the time, the rich scope described deliciously in four senses is worth reading. And the ending, while unforgivable, does not merit abolition of the story that precedes it.

Great Story - Ridiculous Ending(less)

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Mar 28, 2007 Tara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Favorite Quotes

Quite amazing how determined kings and emperors have been to destroy books. But civilization is built on such desecrations, is it not? Justinian the Great burned all of the Greek scrolls in Constantinople after he codified the Roman law and drove the Ostrogoths from Italy. And Shih Huang Ti, the first Emperor of China, the man who unified the five kingdoms and built the Great Wall, decreed that every book written before he was born should be destroyed.

…Because every ruler celebrat...more

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Nov 14, 2010 Aubrey added it · review of another edition

Shelves: gave-up-on

Ok, I didn't actually make it all the way through this book. But I made it far enough to know that I liked the characters and the plot was interesting, but it is so heavily based on unfamiliar history that it was quite feasible to read an entire page and not understand a word King said. I was disappointed to that the history was so confusing because I was actually really drawn to the mystery side of the story. I'm sure super powered history buffs would enjoy this historical mystery though.

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Mar 24, 2011 Caroline rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is exactly the kind of novel I love - an engrossing historical literary thriller. I love historical fiction, and I love books about books, and this is both, which is probably why I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I must admit, I was hoping the mysterious manuscript would be something slightly more than what it was, but that's the thrill-seeker in me. I did find the ending a little anti-climatic, but that's a minor quibble, really.

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Jul 11, 2008 Jeff rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biblio-novels

Another book about books! Just can't get enough of these. This one by King is really interesting. It's set in the 17th Century, and King's descriptions of the city of London and the English country side are vivid and life like. For me, the book also has a very gothic feel to it. Rather Poe-like at times. I loved King's depictions of Lady Marchamont, Pontifex Hall, etc. Lots of descriptions of antique volumes, with extended lists of titles on library shelves. Wonderful! In some places it read mor...more

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Dec 29, 2012 Marie rated it 1 of 5 stars

I picked it up with high hopes - the intriguing title, the promise of a historical romp through rare books - but the author's unrelenting suspense... ugh. Not a single clue or piece of information can be passed without first jumping to a new scene, one of uninteresting drudgery, and then leading up to a long discussion of unrelated topics, which the principal characters engage in with great enthusiasm, butler-maiding their way through all the news of the day and recent history. It wouldn't be so...more

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Aug 10, 2011 Margaret added it

Shelves: 2007

This was a good book but somewhat of a slow read for me due to a lot of historical reference and Latin names. Well-written with a richly textured and complicated plot - LOL, I'm still not sure if I got it all! A good departure for me as it was vastly different than anything I've read before and the book-related theme kept it interesting.

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Feb 12, 2012 Jen rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is mostly enjoyable, as long as you've brushed up on your Ancient Greek authors. I felt a little distracted by all the talk of alchemy that really didn't have all that much to do with the ending - it was more about cartography and rare books. Lots of historical detail weighs this down, and then the ending seems a little rushed.

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Apr 25, 2012 Michael Smith rated it 1 of 5 stars

This is possibly the worst book I have ever read, despite the fact that I am a great fan of King's nonfiction works. But he is not a fiction writer. When you start listlessly skimming just to get through the boring thing so you can say you've read it for the book club, well, that's pretty low. What an erudite, muddled mess.

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Mar 03, 2009 Cynthia Karl rated it 3 of 5 stars

This novel set in the 1660's is chock full of facts and history with a bit of mystery thrown in but it didn't ever really grab me. I much prefer King's non-fiction esp. "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling". The plot in this book revolves around books and ancient texts and a lot of the historical political machinations and scientific explanations are interesting in themselves but the story itself was never very gripping.

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Oct 04, 2008 Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I know a couple of other people who tried to get through this and found it underwhelming, but I truly enjoyed it. I just came across it as I was cleaning off a shelf and recalled how intriguing I found it. I have not generally been one for the "detective" genre. However, this book is so cleverly written and weaves so much of the culture of the late Renaissance, with particular emphasis on the widespread development of printing and book-trading, into its story. There are a lot of off-the-wall Lat...more

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May 15, 2012 Ellen rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read King's Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling a few years ago, so knew he was an able non-fiction author, but this story blew me away. It's a mystery at its core, but the layers are so well constructed that you are truly carried away to Isaac's bookshop on London Bridge and to Pontifex Hall.
Reading it made me realize how poorly educated I am, as he references so many great Greek, Latin and Age of Exploration people and texts.

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Oct 30, 2011 Pam rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Historian is better. But Ex-Libris was kind of a fun read anyway. I like historical fiction. However, I also think the author got kind of lazy by not tying up all loose ends. It's not that I would prefer the story to be completely resolved, but it kind of dropped off a cliff after the climax.

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Feb 10, 2010 E.J. Stevens rated it 5 of 5 stars

Ex Libris opens in the year 1660 with the character of Isaac Inchbold, widower and proprietor of Nonesuch Books located upon London Bridge. Isaac Inchbold, an agoraphobic London bookseller, is happily going about his sheltered existence when he receives a mysterious letter from an even more mysterious Lady Marchamont. Upon his summons to Pontifex Hall Inchbold learns that Lady Marchamont wishes him to begin a search for the manuscript The Labyrinth of the World. Inchbold surprises himself by acc...more

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About Ross King

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Ross King (born July 16, 1962) is a Canadian novelist and non-fiction writer. He began his career by writing two works of historical fiction in the 1990s, later turning to non-fiction, and has since written several critically acclaimed and best-selling historical works.

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Books by Ross King

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism

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Quotes from Ex-Libris

“And as I surveyed the clutter of his study I was pleased to see that he was a man after my own heart. All of his money appeared to have been spent on either books or shelves to hold them.” — 10 people liked it

“The soft throb and glow roused in my breast by the gilt letters of four or five different languages winking at me from scores of handsomely tooled bindings—the sight of so much knowledge so beautifully presented—swiftly flamed out.” — 4 people liked it

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