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The Poe Estate (The Grimm Legacy, #3) QUOTES

The Poe Estate (The Grimm Legacy, #3) QUOTES

1 " Okay, what’s fictional nonfiction, then?” I asked.

“Same idea. Not all the fictional books are fiction,” explained Dr. Rust. “Some are nonfiction.”

“Huh?” Now I was thoroughly confused.

“Oh, for example . . .” Dr. Rust hesitated.

Elizabeth suggested, “The Key to All Mythologies?”

“Yes! Good one. That’s in Middlemarch, a novel by George Eliot. A fussy scholar spends his life writing it—The Key to All Mythologies, I mean. It’s nonfiction, but it exists in the novel, which is fiction. So it’s fictional nonfiction. See? "

― Polly Shulman , The Poe Estate (The Grimm Legacy, #3)

2 " The Library of Fictional Volumes.”

Ahead of us, silhouetted against a brilliant orange sunset, was a tall, rectangular stone building with banks and banks of windows.

“Fictional volumes?” echoed Cole. “You mean novels and short stories? But why would they keep the ship’s logbooks there? Aren’t logbooks nonfiction?”

Andre said, “It’s not a fiction library. It’s a fictional library of fictional books. Some are fictional fiction and some are fictional nonfiction.”

“Isn’t all fiction fictional? Isn’t that what the word means?” Cole objected. “And what’s fictional nonfiction? That doesn’t mean anything.”

Dr. Rust explained, “The Spectral Library is where we keep books that only exist in books. Like . . . What’s a good example, someone?”

“The Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning,” suggested Andre.

“Exactly! The Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning is a work of fiction—it’s a medieval romance. But it only exists in the Poe story ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’ The narrator reads The Mad Trist to his crazy friend. You can’t find it in any ordinary library, but we have a copy here in our library of fictional books. It’s fictional fiction. "

― Polly Shulman , The Poe Estate (The Grimm Legacy, #3)

3 " Okay,” said Cole, “then why did Andre just call the library a fictional library of fictional volumes?”

“For the same reason the rest of our collection in the Poe Annex is fictional,” said Dr. Rust. “The library comes from a work of fiction. In this case, ‘The Spectral Librarian’—another Laetitia Flint story . . .”

“Actually,” Elizabeth interrupted, “if you want to get really technical, you could call it a fictional fictional library of fictional fiction and fictional nonfiction. Because in the Flint story, the narrator finds a manuscript in an old library. The manuscript is called The Spectral Librarian, and it’s a novel about a ghost librarian who tends the Spectral Library of Fictional Volumes. It’s a story within a story. So in the Flint fiction, the library is fictional, which makes it doubly fictional here. "

― Polly Shulman , The Poe Estate (The Grimm Legacy, #3)