The Librarianist

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The best-selling novel about a pair of sibling assassins was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and later became the basis for a movie starring John C. With his inimitable verve, skewed humor, and compassion for the outcast, Patrick deWitt has written a wide-ranging and ambitious document of the introvert's condition.

By contrast we get very little information on the books that Bob reads – which means that for us our true impression is that Bob lives rather then reads. There aren’t any metalsmiths anymore, and soon there’ll be no authors, publishers, booksellers — the entire industry will topple into the sea, like Atlantis; and the librarianists will be buried most deeply in the silt. The plot managed to get back to the senior center near the end where Bob became a resident himself eventually. He had no friends, per se; his phone did not ring, and he had no family, and if there was a knock on the door it was a solicitor; but this absence didn’t bother him, and he felt no craving for company. He’s a retired librarian who decides to help out at the local old folks’ home, curating a selection of his favourite stories to read to the residents - and then he finds out one of the residents’ identities, which holds great importance to him.The flashback section involving Bob’s budding romance with Connie contains flickers of the kind of eccentric figure deWitt seems so enamoured of: Connie’s father is a religious fanatic who dresses them both in hooded black capes for their trips to the library where Connie and Bob first meet. The non-linear narrative takes a while to get used to, and the pace is on the slower side, which suits the story. In the narrative present, which takes place in the pre-pandemic, pre-recession years between 2005 and 2006, Bob lives alone in a mint-green house and spends much of his time in isolation with his beloved books. The dream arrives like a bit of atmosphere, the melancholy reflectiveness of an old man’s waning years, but it is really the novel’s central question: What did Bob Comet find at the Hotel Elba and then yearn for the rest of his life?

All his memories are not happy ones but have contributed to Bob’s way of looking at life and himself. For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password. Sure, this was still great writing and had some fun characters, but I’m not sure how 100 pages of this was needed and if it ever comes together. Here deWitt dispenses with any pretence of subversion and lets his absurdist flag fly, to the novel’s detriment. Since retiring from the public library where he has spent his entire professional career, he’s enjoyed a life of almost uninterrupted solitude in the house his mother left to him decades earlier.We also see him in his job at the library, and meet the character of Miss Ogilvie, Bob’s first boss. Behind Bob Comet's straight-man façade is the story of an unhappy child's runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian's vocation, and of the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses. in his older days, he volunteers at a retirement home with geriatric patients that are delightfully strange. His favorite dream was that he was alone and it was early in the morning, and he was setting up for the day, and all was peaceful and still and his shoes made no sound as he walked across the carpeting, an empty bus shushing past on the damp street. Because although we are told (a number of times) that is how Bob views the world we are not really shown it; as we instead see Bob in a series of rather dramatic incidents (the elderly lady rescue and sudden discovery, the three-way relationship and rapid marriage, betrayal by and then death of his best friend, the cross-country runaway and then in the final section a hospital trip and closing revelations) which are more novelistic in themselves.

Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook). In contrast to them all is Bob, a “steady, hand-on-the-tiller type”, a man possessed of a “natural enjoyment of modest accomplishment”, a man firmly set at a midpoint between extremes. The Librarianist offers no firsthand account of the romance that kindles between Connie and Ethan, just interactions that Bob glimpses from a distance, small gestures, inexplicable shifts in mood, the implied significance of a bit of red string. There are so many little details that give so much depth to the story, I really found myself reading slowly so I wouldn't miss anything. Bob Comet, a retired librarian … brings to mind John Williams’ Stoner and Thoreau’s chestnut about ‘lives of quiet desperation,’ but it is telling that deWitt chooses to capture him at times when his life takes a turn.There was a photograph of the woman, in sunglasses and cap, and beneath the photo, a text: My name is CHIP, and I live at the GAMBELL-REED SENIOR CENTER. I really liked it, and never lost interest, which says a lot since it's the story of an introverted 71 year old retired librarian, who is quite happy with a life in which there are no surprises, living every day much the same as the day before. Since retiring from the public library where he spent his entire professional career, he’s enjoyed a life of almost uninterrupted solitude in the house his mother left to him decades earlier. But she’s been watching the energy drinks for forty-five minutes, and I’m worried she’s going to freak out. The Librarianist becomes truly Twainian—and deWittian—in its third flashback, as the 11-year-old Bob runs away from home and meets a pair of women en route to the Hotel Elba.

The Canadian author of this novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2011 for his second novel “The Sisters Brothers” (which also won two Canadian literary prizes and some other nominations) - an offbeat, eccentric-character-populated Western-based novel which to me read more like a Coen brothers film script. Patrick deWitt's The Librarianist depicts main character Bob Comet's childhood experience of being driven home by a sheriff, after having run away, on the day that officially marked the end of World War II.There had been whole eras of Bob’s working life where he knew a lamentation at the smallness of his existence, but now he understood how lucky he had been. From the best-selling author of Atonement and Saturday comes the epic and intimate story of one man's life across generations and historical upheavals. Bob’s experiences are imbued with melancholy but also a bright, sustained comedy; he has a talent for locating bizarre and outsize players to welcome onto the stage of his life.