The great chronicler of American weirdos is back with his warmest novel yet.” –Laura Miller, Slate

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 centre that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he’s known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the centre. 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 humour, and compassion for the outcast, 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.

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Shelf Life Books | Calgary Public Library

BE CURIOUSER

• The Librarianist author Patrick deWitt on success, and the mystery of what readers want – The Globe and Mail
• Patrick deWitt is a 21^st-Century Mark Twain – Slate
• Patrick deWitt lowers the volume in The Librarianist – The Washington Post
• Eccentrics, oddballs and a book lover named Bob: Patrick deWitt’s new novel The Librarianist – The Toronto Star
• Review: The delightfully quirky new novel from the Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers follows a retired librarian called Bob – The Telegraph
• Vancouver Public Library was formative for the young version of bestselling author Patrick deWitt – The Vancouver Sun
• Is a Life Lived Through Art Really Lived at All? (note: contains spoilers) – The Walrus