From the author of The Sisters Brothers. Bob Comet is a retired librarian, isolated but not lonely, living out his quiet days in a mint-colored house in Oregon, surrounded by his books and small comforts. One morning, out on his daily walk, he performs an act of kindness that brings him into contact with a nearby senior center, where he soon begins volunteering. Here, as a community of peers and friends 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.
I think each Patrick deWitt novel is going to be the one that helps everyone fall in love with his writing, but The Librarianist could finally do it ... DeWitt's dialogue moves with the speed and precision of great conversation and its jokes sneak up on you, more like a wisp of wind on your cheek than someone tapping you on the shoulder to tell you something funny ... Bright and entertaining from beginning to end.
Mr. deWitt’s smoothest book by far, one more prone than usual to clichés...but also more warmhearted. It shares the attributes of its hero: likable, unshowy, somewhat dull but reliably soothing.
A somewhat artificial premise ... Amusing ... But the energy picks up considerably — and just in time — in the novel’s second section, which jumps back half a century ... The quick progress and fraught terms of their relationship, which can be both funny and poignant, are the heart of the novel. And there’s some outlandish drama here, too ... A novel about quiet decency in an age short on quietude and decency is nothing to complain about, of course. But simple, decent lives are what most of us lead, so we know that tone well ... The Librarianist never gives us an urgent reason to check it out.
