When Mukesh, reeling from the disastrous first venture into the Harrow Road Library, struggles to find a book on his own, he ends up checking out an out-of-date government manual that provides specifications for highway and bridge constructions. That kind of book reassures Mukesh—nonfiction clarifies the confusing world by providing data that falls into patterns of inevitability and causality. To Mukesh, nonfiction—whether a book about transportation or a nature documentary—pretends the world is accessible and knowable.

To the Mukesh of the early chapters, fiction does the opposite. It is a waste to spend time caught in a fantasy. Early on, Mukesh sees no value in novels, especially in fiction; he cannot understand what his wife got out of them, and he worries that his granddaughter’s love of them is a sign of social isolation. Aleisha is not a reader either; she is bored by her job at the library and too caught up in the problems of her life to see any point in wasting time on books. In the parallel stories of Mukesh and Aleisha, the novel provides two case studies of characters, both non-readers, who come to learn the same insight: Fiction provides templates for handling the real world.