The Librarianist

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The next day Bob returned to the beach to practice his press rolls. The first performance was scheduled to take place thirty-six hours hence; with this in mind, Bob endeavored to arrive at a place where he could achieve the percussive effect without thinking of it. An hour and a half passed, and he paused, looking out to sea and having looking-out-to-sea thoughts. He imagined he heard his name on the wind and turned to find Ida leaning out the window of the tilted tower; her face was green as spinach puree, and she was waving at him that he should come up. Bob held the drum above his head, and she nodded that he should bring it with him. It is a priority for CBC to create products that are accessible to all in Canada including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges.

Melancholy is the wistful identification of time as thief, and it is rooted in memories of past love and success. Sorrow is a more hopeless proposition. Sorrow is the understanding you shall not get that which you crave and, perhaps, deserve, and it is rooted in, or encouraged by, excuse me, the death impulse."

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by June scowled at Ida. “You know, Bob,” she said, “I support your project in every way. But I’m uneasy at the thought of one so young as yourself being alone in the world. Because the world sometimes is a complicated place.”

Many thanks to Ecco and NetGalley for the digital review copy of this novel. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. This novel is due to be released on July 4, 2023. 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. For example, we’re told early on that Bob’s wife ran off with his best friend when they were all young and he never remarried. Fine - but the entire middle of the novel is the story of how this happened. And guess what? Besides fleshing out the wife and best friend, to no effect, we get to read in excruciatingly dull detail what we already know. The wife and best friend run off and get married. So what’s the point? I really don’t know. Memorable characters and a strain of burlesque comedy swirl through this story spanning the life of a retired librarian ... deWitt takes us on a waltzer of a ride, twisting through Bob's lifeOkay, but if she starts freaking out, can you try to get her through the doors?” The cashier made a corralling gesture, arms out. “Once she’s in the parking lot she’s out of my domain.” When and how Bob meets Connie (and her freaky Priest-hating father) and Ethan - really the only two people with who he ever forms a close bond – and how the dynamics of that off-the-wall set of relationships develop;

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. A quietly effective and moving character study. We are told many a time that Bob loves books, that he's always preferred books rather than interacting with people. I never felt the passion unless it wasn't a true passion just a way of hiding from society? It’s things I can’t even talk about in polite conversation. And the cops won’t come unless there’s a weapon involved. You know how many ways there are to freak out without a weapon? Literally one million ways.” Bob Comet is the non-humorous Leslie Jordan of a Wes Anderson film, and I was determined to give this book five stars based on the first half of the book alone. Sadly, the third part of the story saw my enthusiasm falter, and the last part ended with my expectations battling the reality of life and fiction. And the following, spoken by the proprietor of the rundown hotel, would seem to be the life advice that young Bob most took to heart:Bob Comet, deWitt’s sepia-toned hero, is 71 years old, healthy, tidy and “not unhappy.” 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. “He had no friends, per se,” deWitt writes. “He communicated with the world partly by walking through it, but mainly by reading about it. Bob had read novels exclusively and dedicatedly from childhood and through to the present.” All his life he had believed the real world was the world of books; it was here that mankind’s finest inclinations were represented.” 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. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic, Roland Baines sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it. Now, deWitt has published an exceedingly gentle novel about the hushed life of a retired librarian in Portland, Ore. Readers waiting for another book as irrepressible and strange as “The Sisters Brothers” will have to keep waiting. Which is not to say that “The Librarianist” is without charm, only that it presumes a reservoir of goodwill and patience. How a nice quiet librarianist, who starts off helping a person, and then volunteers, and then becomes a part of something greater than himself, can actually be a sweet yet flawed imperfect, but readable story.

There is, for example, the ­inappropriately flirtatious Brighty; there’s Maria, “sly to the world’s foolishness”; and there’s Jill, ­struggling to cope with pain: “She spoke of a wish to measure it, a ­volume or weight she might assign it, to share with doctors, with strangers, bus drivers.” Having written a Western (The Sisters Brothers, 2011, made into a not very good film starring Joaquin Phoenix), a mother-son mystery (French Exit, 2018, made into an excellent film starring Michelle Pfeiffer, for which deWitt also wrote the screenplay), a work of gothic fantasy (Undermajordomo Minor, 2015), and a second-person narrative about a bunch of Hollywood barflies (Ablutions, 2009), the new book is all about a journey of discovery for a retired librarian named Bob.I did enjoy my time with this book - there’s a warmth to the writing and it has an offbeat humor- and it does make me want to seek out the rest of deWitt’s work. Behind Bob Comet's straight-man facade 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. 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. You can just picture the Anderson staginess: the long establishing shots; the jump cuts to a close-up on her face, then his; the vibrant colours; the exaggerated faces. I got serious The Grand Budapest Hotel vibes.) This whole section was so bizarre and funny that I could overlook the suspicion that deWitt got to the two-thirds point of his novel and asked himself “now what?!” The whole book is episodic and full of absurdist dialogue, and delights in the peculiarities of its characters, from Connie’s zealot father to the diner chef who creates the dubious “frizzled beef” entrée. And Bob himself? He may appear like a blank, but there are deep waters there. And his passion for books was more than enough to endear him to me: