The book begins with the introduction of a simple man, and through his encounter with the residents and visitors at the Gamble-Reed Senior Center, he reexamines his past and his future. This book meets at the apex of memory and memory loss, and what unfolds is a beautiful story of love, friendship, adventure, and sadness. What Bob finds at Gamble-Reed is the friendships, adventure, and joy that replace his life’s contentment. I loved this book so much.

Thanks to Ecco Press for the advanced copy. I really enjoyed this story about a retired librarian, Bob Comet, whose live revolves around a set of routines now that he is in retirement. After an encounter leads him to a retirement community, he finds a new sense of purpose in this quiet and compassionate book.

This was a quirky, meandering, character-driven tale about the life of Bob Comet, a retired librarian in Portland, Oregon. He lives in his little mint-green house that has been in his family for generations, and enjoys a quiet life of reading and the occasional walk. On one of his walks, Bob encounters an unusual woman in a convenience store that he comes to learn is a ‘runaway’ from a local senior center, where he eventually starts to volunteer and befriends some of the people there. We then start to learn a little more about Bob’s life by jumping back in time to learn about his young adult life and marriage, and finally going back further to recount a story from his childhood before coming back to present-day retired Bob and his journey to find a community and a place that feels like home.

I haven’t read any other works by Patrick deWitt, but I enjoyed his quirky and easy-to-read writing style and I appreciated the humor that was inserted throughout. However despite being easily readable, the book overall felt like a slog to get through at times. I really enjoyed the present-day sections, and I appreciated the backstory of Bob’s young adult life for context and its contribution to how Bob came to grow into the man he is when we first meet him in retirement, but the section that focused on his childhood just felt incredibly slow and without any real purpose. I think I would’ve enjoyed the story more without it.

I’m glad that I took a chance on this book and got introduced to deWitt as an author. I enjoyed it enough that I’m certainly interested in exploring his backlist. Having picked this title to read based almost solely on the title, I do wish it had a little more ‘bookish’ energy to it rather than just a few scenes in a library, but that certainly wasn’t a deal breaker. All in all, it was an enjoyable and unique reading experience, even if it is one that likely won’t stick with me long term. Thank you so much to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This book is so good--sweet, heartbreaking, funny, subtle. (Not as laugh out loud funny/witty as French Exit, his last novel, but still funny.) Books never make me cry but I was tearing up as I finished it--the ending is a little sentimental but it was more the cumulative effect of having this book in in my life for a day or two and then being done with it. It starts off a bit slow (honestly a bit boring) and feels like it's going to be a familiar trope: a guy starts volunteering at a retirement center, meets some eccentric people who change his life for the better, and rethinks his life or something. (Kind of like what I imagine A Man Called Ove is about, although I'm basing that only on the trailer for the movie.)

But then it totally changes. It's not a spoiler to say that Bob has been alone for most of his life after his wife left him for his best friend early on in their marriage. After an opening act of Bob getting to know the retirement center, we burrow into his past and learn about his previous marriage and friendship--a really heartbreaking and well-done section; I was intrigued by what would happen even though, of course, we know what will happen; I kind of felt guilty or voyeuristic--and then we burrow deeper into the past after that for another episode that took place when Bob was 11, before returning to the present. It's a deceptively simple structure, really well-constructed. I feel like deWitt is kind of giving you what you want, but withholding just a small percentage of it, so you're never fully satisfied, and you're always a little sad. A really, really affecting, bittersweet book that I know I'll read again.

The book started out with an engaging premises, but unfortunately went downhill fairly quickly. I just did not connect with the characters and found Bob, the protagonist to be rather dull. I did like how the author brought the book to conclusion but getting to the end was a chore.

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.

I’ve enjoyed Patrick deWitt’s books in the past, particularly The Sisters Brothers, and appreciate that this new book is set in Portland, Oregon (as am I). It’s a rare reading pleasure to come upon familiar and authentic landmarks near one’s home. But this is only one a small aspect of why I found his new novel to be exceptional.

The Librarianist tells the life story of Bob Comet, a librarian, whose focus, we are told, from an early age, has been on books, both reading and sharing. Bob's life unspools in four parts: old-age, young adult, youth and then another dip into old-age. The prose is beautifully simple with a tempo matching the simplicity of the plot. The details are rich but not overbearing, and the phenomenological underpinning gives the reader a constant sense of being in the moment, of being present with Bob.

Throughout the four parts, ever-steady Bob walks, interacts, observes and recalls. The set-up in the first part relates to a long-lost divorced wife. The connection between her and the present (fifty-odd years later) was unexpected and the subsequent tension inherent in this startling revelation had me ready to devour the remainder of the book. The next part shuttles back to Bob’s young adult past and DeWitt unearths for us aspects of the initial revelation, and the connective tissue between past and present accumulates. I remained thoroughly immersed and unmovable from my reading chair, a reading experience of extraordinary quality. The third part, an adventure from Bob Comet’s childhood, however, felt disconnected from the power of this evolving narrative thread, and I was eager to pass through his youth to return to the plot elements and their implications set up so strongly in the first two parts. I was only modestly satisfied in the resolution offered in the final part. I did feel warmth and compassion and an ongoing interest in Bob and his aged reflections, but the enthusiasm I felt in the first two parts never materialized again.

But then, I realized, isn’t this how life actually unfolds?

The story of an individual life doesn’t tie up into a tidy package, not for Bob Comet, or any of us. In reality, the connections between childhood events and adult perspectives and actions are always tenuous, uncertain and unclear. The actions and ponderings of an old man close to the end of life, newly hit by disappointment and regret, will be cloudy, perhaps laced with a hint of dementia. There are few lessons to be learned, no lasting morals in our “real" life stories. Thus, on reflection, I determined the pacing of The Librarianist to be brilliant, insightful and honest, a literary architecture that may contribute to the reading community beginning to wean itself from pervasive and inauthentic resolution-narratives that are of little use in interpreting life, which in the end is the only real job of art.

At least I hope that’s the intent behind The Librarianist.

Highly recommended.

Hm. Speaking as a deWitt fan, I didn’t love this one as much as others. While it opens strong and segues beguilingly into the back history of Bob’s marriage, I was less attracted by the childhood section and the arch characters connected to it. Middle age and elderly Bob intrigued and compelled much more, and the terrain - of mystery at life’s vicissitudes, and empathy at a small life - were constantly appealing.
This author is never dull, but this is not his strongest work.

This book was stale and boring. I didn't like the characters, I hated how disjointed it was, and I gave up right around 70%. I just couldn't force myself to continue.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an ARC of this book by Patrick deWitt.

If books can be called sweet, this is a sweet book. It is the story of an ordinary man, one who might seem calm, competent, and maybe invisible to most of the world. the story begins with him as an older man finding a senior lot in the streets and returning her to the retirement home where she lives. He is so impressed with the place that he volunteers his time to work there. He wants to share stories. He makes some friends and soon learns that the woman he rescued was someone he'd known well in his past.

And the story takes us back to that past. To his becoming a librarian and the small adventures that befall him. He meets a woman and marries her. He makes a best friend. All at the library.

I stumbled a bit at the beginning of the book but soon I was hooked and could not stop reading.. deWitt is impressive with his stories--none of which are similar and yet are delightful and verge on kooky, the good kind of kooky. I really enjoyed this book and recommend it.

The LIbrarianist
by Patrick deWitt
Pub Date: July 4, 2023
Ecco
Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
Being a librarian, I am drawn to books about books and libriarians.
This is the story of Bob Comet, retired librarian who finds himself at loose ends. He starts volunteering at the local senior center and begins to feel part of the community. I enjoyed the segments about the senior center.
I was less interested in the lengthy flashbacks to his childhood days. I highly recommend this book to fans of character-driven narratives.
4 stars

I really enjoyed the latest book from Patrick deWitt, author of one of my favorite books, The Sisters Brothers. The Librarianist tells the story of Bob Comet, a retired librarian living a quiet life in Portland, Oregon. It starts in the present, but goes back in time to when Bob was a young man falling in love and getting married, and a young boy who ran away from home.

Like Bob, this is a quiet book. It's beautifully written, and I savored each carefully-crafted sentence. Bob is surrounded by a variety of unusual characters, which makes his quiet reliability (and hidden depths) really stand out.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this wonderful book!

One of the most enduring books i have ever read. Patrick deWitt has created a wonderful story about a retired librarian Bob Comet who lives alone. Through an event Bob ends up a senior center and it is suggested that he come and volunteer.
Through his volunteering with these seniors we find out about Bob's childhood, youth and adult life.
The book reminds me of A Man Named Ove by Fredrik Backman and is just as enjoyable.
I enjoy the style of writing and the variety of so many strong delightfully colorful characters.
This story is full of humor and wit. This is a happy warm funny book that I highly recommend to someone who just wants a good read.

Thank you NetGalley and Ecco Press for giving me this advanced E-book in exchange for my review consideration. All opinions are completely my own.

The Librarianist was a lot of what I've come to expect from Patrick deWitt - great characters with hilarious quirks, going through life looking at things with a unique bent.

We open with Bob Comet rescuing a woman named Chip who has escaped from a local senior center. He finds her at a convenience store and returns her to the center, where he is overcome with the desire to volunteer. At first Bob turns to his former career as a librarianist to motivate his volunteer work, but after a few poorly attended readings, the center director asks him to just come and visit. Bob, for all that his career fulfilled him, is a deeply lonely man, divorced since his mid-20s to a woman who fell for his best friend, and the center provides valuable human interaction.

Without giving anything away, events at the center during Bob's volunteer work send us back in time, where we learn all about Bob's marriage gone wrong, as well as the time he ran away from home at aged 11.

Eventually everything catches up in the present, so to speak (the present in our novel is 2006). I think the present-day timelines were the most effective - in both past timelines, it took a little while for me to get my bearings and I also felt that young Bob behaved much too similarily to elderly Bob.

All in all, a great Patrick deWitt novel, if that's your thing. Thanks to NetGalley and Ecco for the ARC.

A quiet novel, fittingly, given the title, but still filled with the full, well-lived life of Bob Comet. Bob is a lifelong librarian, now retired in his 70's, trying to fill his days as he approaches the end of them. Throughout the pages of this book, we relive the defining moments of life for Bob through lengthy flashbacks as we delve into what makes up a life. The moments are often small and this is not a story filled with dramatic swings, but just the slow metronomic ups and downs of normalcy.

The most winning part of this book, and any deWitt book, is the dialogue. Often hilarious, his characters are filled with a dry sense of humor to go along with compassion, empathy, and humanity.

A perfect novel! Now, I may be biased as I am a librarian - but I think this would be a delight to any reader. I loved The French Exit, so was tremendously excited for this. Luckily it lived up to the hype! I'm on the hunt for the rest of deWitt's back catalog now.

I have never read anything by Patrick deWitt, so this was a wonderful surprise!! Beautiful prose and an in-depth character study of the main character, Bob. This book was about an ordinary man’s life, but I thought many moments were profound, and I loved the quirky, fun, side characters. 10/10 would recommend!!

I had a difficult time initially engaging with this book - the protagonist, Bob, just struck me as so flat. I actually put the book down after a few pages, but after reading reviews of some other works by this author, decided to give it another try. I’m glad I did, as I gradually became invested in Bob and his life story. So Bob (!) is a loner, born to be a librarian and it’s a wonder that he meets a partner who wants to marry him, strange as he is. He also ironically attracts a best friend who is a dubious player and that friendship has an unfortunate arc. The plot is not fast moving or action-packed and the dialogue is not in any way scintillating but I thought the writing actually got better as the story progressed, infused with growing tenderness, depth and humor towards Bob and his orbiting companions. By the end of the story, I was just a little bit in love with weird Bob, which I’m hoping was the author’s intent for his readers and not some aberration on my part. This is a sweet story, perhaps not especially profound or provocative, but it left me feeling good and hopeful and gave me some things to think about regarding the human condition.

This book was not what I was expecting at all, and in a very “meh” way.

One day while Bob is out on a walk, he finds and elderly woman wandering and seemingly confused. When he helps her return to an elder care facility, he decides to volunteer in the hopes of bringing some joy to the residents and guests.

This novel started out pretty strong with an interesting premise and quirky characters. I absolutely adored some of the banter between Bob and the residents. The first twist was so great, I was excited for the rest.

The rest was not great (to say the least). I did not find myself connected to any of the characters and I feel like the author lost the plot a bit. The ending felt like he ran out of time and had to quickly make a “moral of the story” out of it, and it just didn’t work.

2/5 stars for the banter and quirky characters, but the plot needs a lot of work in my opinion!

Thank you NetGalley and Putnam for sending me an ARC of The Librarianist in exchange for a honest review!

wow, is this a fantastic nonlinear work of literary fiction. bob comet is a man who has spent most of his life as a librarian. in his older days, he volunteers at a retirement home with geriatric patients that are delightfully strange. everything changes when he realizes that one of the patients is his long lost ex wife.

you get to know bob in the most intimate way in this vonnegutesque novel. the characters are odd and quirky in the best way. it is masterfully written and so much fun to read. you will be constantly turning the pages to learn more about this man and his unconventional life.

thank you so much to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review!