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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Librarianist (edizione 2023)di Patrick deWitt
Informazioni sull'operaThe Librarianist di Patrick deWitt
Top Five Books of 2023 (265) Books Read in 2023 (555) » 10 altro Sto caricando le informazioni...
Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. At first I was prepared to be charmed by this whimsical account of the life and times of Bob Comet. A misfit at school, he became a librarian - of course he did. Then he continued - quite contentedly - his largely friendless existence, living in the house where he'd been born, now his alone since his mother's death. He meets a young woman - also a social misfit, completely under her father's thumb - at the library. Reader, he marries her. At about this time, he also comes across the man who becomes his only male friend, and - no, spoiler alert. We are introduced to Bob at the point when he's long been separated from his wife. And, so far so good. But we plunge back into his younger life and the book loses its way, especially when we spend far too long in the time when he ran away from home as an eleven year old. It's not hugely relevant to the story or to the man he became. A bit of a curate's egg of a book then. Good in parts. But I'm not encouraged to read more work by deWitt. ( ) I liked this, and was especially captivated by the author’s writing style. Yes, it somehow ends up feeling a little slight. When it came to the main character, perhaps there wasn’t any there there. But there is quirk and mystery in many of the side characters. It is often funny. And the prose, and the dialogue, sang. A good read for the right reader. Kind of an indie work, at heart. If it were a record, it would be by the Decembrists. I thought this would be a gentle, slightly humorous book about a seventy year old man's life. And it is! I thought it would be like 'Dinosaurs' by Lydia Millet and it is! Though 'Dinosaurs' is dear to my heart. I will not give any of the surprises away here, but I also didn't see how much of this tied together, other than to be a gentle story of a man's life. I wish I had more to say, but I also expected to like it more. It was fine! Also, not bookish enough considering the title! *Book #149/340 I have read of the shortlisted Morning News Tournament of Books Patrick Dewitt is a popular author but in this book he winds a lacklustre story to a fizzled out ending that was so unsatisfactory I wanted to yell. Dewitt creates Bob, makes us care about him, but the ending of the book is just a bunch of unconnected vignettes that offer nothing about Bob’s nature. There is no character development, no change in any of the characters. I found this frustrating. I mean yes, life is just so daily, but I read to get a glimmer of how people thrive in life or don’t, not just skid along the surface. Ultimately disappointing. Well-written but there’s not a moment of tension anywhere. The Librarianist is a character study that uses flashback sections that have us constantly revising what we think we know about Bob Comet, a quiet librarian in Portland, Oregon. Author Patrick deWitt uses a slightly snarky, but always affectionate, style that had passages that made me think of Wodehouse. Although they are gently satirized, you can tell deWitt is fond of his characters. You will like them too.
The Librarianist is unyielding in its defiance of our arguably too-set expectations about how novels should depict human interiority in times of flux, crisis, or transition. Bob Comet is no comet; he is a steady, low-voltage star, a pinprick of light who only partially awakens to the complexity of his own life. By the end, I came to admire Patrick deWitt’s commitment to the mission he has set himself: to render a figure who is not beaten up by loss or reformed by insight, a man who remains, nearly always, resolutely himself. Patrick deWitt’s novel “The Librarianist” offers a quirky, affectionate portrait of a retired librarian who discovers friendship and community late in life...“The Librarianist,” a quirky, affectionate portrait of an introverted loner who makes some surprising connections late in life, DeWitt tames the outlandishness without sacrificing his offbeat humor. His bemused sense of compassion for his characters recalls Anne Tyler, with whom he shares a soft spot for misfits, along with a firm conviction that even supposedly ordinary people lead extraordinary lives. .. The title character, Bob Comet, is a former librarian in deWitt’s hometown of Portland, Oregon.... DeWitt’s great achievement is in creating, perhaps for the first time, a character whose very ordinariness is his defining feature. Of course, the section at the Hotel Elba goes to show the extent to which an ordinary life can be deceptive, though this comes at a cost on the level of emotional resonance. The aching heart of “The Librarianist” is a piercing seriocomic character study of isolation and abandonment. Would that deWitt had left his more flamboyant tendencies in the drawer for this one Premi e riconoscimentiMenzioniElenchi di rilievo
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. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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