The Librarianist -- Patrick DeWitt, Hardcover

From bestselling and award-winning author Patrick deWitt comes the story of Bob Comet, a man who has lived his life through and for literature, unaware that his own experience is a poignant and affecting narrative in itself.

Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books and small comforts in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he's known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed.

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. 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.

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. The Librarianist celebrates the extraordinary in the so-called ordinary life, and depicts beautifully the turbulence that sometimes exists beneath a surface of serenity.

Author: Patrick DeWitt
Publisher: Ecco Press
Published: 07/04/2023
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.09lbs
Size: 9.26h x 6.39w x 1.23d
ISBN: 9780063085121

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 02/01/2023 pg. 2
Publishers Weekly 04/03/2023
Kirkus Reviews 05/01/2023
Booklist 06/01/2023 pg. 31
Library Journal 07/01/2023 pg. 63
BookPage 07/01/2023