Wardini Book Review: The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt (Bloomsbury, $36.99)

The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt

This is a novel about a man named Bob Comet. Bob ‘was a retired librarian, 71 years of age, and not unhappy.’ The story begins with Bob helping a confused lady, Chip, back to her retirement home and spans specific parts of his childhood, librarianhood, and his present, older self.

Chip lives at the Gambell-Reed Senior Center in Portland, Oregon, and her return by Bob’s hand is the catalyst for a host of wildly entertaining characters to enter the story.

Linus zooms around in his motorised wheelchair, a giant monstrosity of a ruined man, gleeful that his appetites have made him what he is; he regrets nothing. Jill is depressed and the centre’s boss, Maria, is empathetic, funny and intelligent.

Part 2 narrates Bob’s early adult life, his vocation as a librarian and his introduction to the two most important people in his life: charismatic and glamorous Ethan who becomes Bob’s best friend, and Connie who will become Bob’s wife.

Throughout, Bob is the quiet one, his inner life of reading and thinking articulated in the most wonderful prose and dazzlingly smart dialogue. All of the characters’ interactions are superb, life at its most intelligent and beautiful, with all the mundane parts taken out.

Then we have Bob’s recurring dreams about the Hotel Elba, a brief and important episode during his childhood in which we meet the thespians June and Ida, Mr More, Mr Whitsell and Alice.

This part of the novel is beautifully bizarre and gently joyful, the characters again finely honed, instantly loveable and entertaining. It is this part that holds one of my favourite lines: ‘Bob could not yet see the ocean but there was the sense of an ocean pending.’

The last part of the book takes us back to the Gambell-Reed Senior Center. The strands of the story weave together and some of the things we have been desperate to discover become known.

Bob is a quiet character with what some may see as a small life but as previously stated, he is not unhappy. There is a wonderful honesty in Bob’s wonderings and in the dialogue that makes it a deeply satisfying read, where the right questions are asked and answered, and there is little misunderstanding between the characters.

It is not an exaggeration to say that The Librarianist filled my heart with joy. There are some truly astounding moments and the writing throughout is so lovely that to jot its lines of beauty into my notebook would mean to write out the whole novel.

Clearly, I have a new favourite.