Have you ever heard that a library is a magical place? Mary Colquhoun is a librarian who experiences it. She has cultivated silence to the point of knowing "the pitch and tone of its soundless echo"; but one day a charming jester goes into the library looking for his frog, an intelligent, sly animal the size of a baby elephant. Mary, helped by a mute saxophonist and some drifters will hunt the frog, dance, and will end up finding more than that.

The giant frog!

Jeff Vandermeer has a very natural talent to create fantastic worlds out of simple and common things, so everyday life is able to become more than magical. In Greensleves, he carefully uses motifs like the frog, the eagle and a peculiar look in the eyes of the characters as gates that lead into a magic universe where colors, sounds, and even the silence have a spirit of their own. ( )

As brief as Greensleeves is, page for digital page it stands alongside the finest that Jeff VanderMeer has been consistently offering in his sublime satchel of strange.

It is a touching story of wearied librarian Mary Colquhoun in her comfortable complacency in life. Sequestered from the world, she surrounds herself with books, the occasional second floor cadre of drifters, and the solace of the library’s nearly intact stained glass canopy, in favor of the quiet consolation from her youthful impetuousness.

Until the day the eccentrically bedizened Cedric arrives, enlisting her assistance to locate his giant frog run roughshod in her library. I’ll say no more, other than note her bittersweet rejuvenation in the pursuit of said quarry.

Greensleeves is exquisitely written. VanderMeer’s tale floats about the reader like an early winter zephyr, carrying both the beauty and chill of the coming snow, each rapping about our ears, reminding us to savor it before it turns to memory. Thankfully, this story can be savored with a well timed rereading before that happens.