The Librarianist

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To me, this book suffered from a lengthy section about Bob's one rebellion in his childhood, where he ran away from home for four days when he was 11, and got involved with a strange but well meaning group of people in another town. Again, the dialogue was the high point, but the whole episode, while making a great short story, seemed to have no bearing on the rest of the book. The Librarianist is deWitt’s fifth novel. Stylistically, there are certainly resemblances to his previous books – they’re all rather funny, in a quirky kind of way – but each one is unique. One might think of the Canadian author’s career as composed of a series of extraordinarily vivid tessellated patterns. If you’ve never read him, think of him as the literary equivalent of, say, the filmmaker Wes Anderson: deadpan tales of dysfunction and disappointment, heavy on the whimsy, light, bright, beguiling, perhaps a little solicitous, and yet also always somehow sad. You can just picture the Anderson staginess: the long establishing shots; the jump cuts to a close-up on her face, then his; the vibrant colours; the exaggerated faces. I got serious The Grand Budapest Hotel vibes.) This whole section was so bizarre and funny that I could overlook the suspicion that deWitt got to the two-thirds point of his novel and asked himself “now what?!” The whole book is episodic and full of absurdist dialogue, and delights in the peculiarities of its characters, from Connie’s zealot father to the diner chef who creates the dubious “frizzled beef” entrée. And Bob himself? He may appear like a blank, but there are deep waters there. And his passion for books was more than enough to endear him to me:

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. It is a priority for CBC to create products that are accessible to all in Canada including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges.Melancholy is the wistful identification of time as thief, and it is rooted in memories of past love and success. Sorrow is a more hopeless proposition. Sorrow is the understanding you shall not get that which you crave and, perhaps, deserve, and it is rooted in, or encouraged by, excuse me, the death impulse." We are told many a time that Bob loves books, that he's always preferred books rather than interacting with people. I never felt the passion unless it wasn't a true passion just a way of hiding from society?

You know someone, and then you don’t know them, and in their absence you wonder what their life was made up of.” The Canadian author of this novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2011 for his second novel “The Sisters Brothers” (which also won two Canadian literary prizes and some other nominations) - an offbeat, eccentric-character-populated Western-based novel which to me read more like a Coen brothers film script. This is his fifth and latest novel – and the only other I have read – and it retains something of the same offbeat humour and eccentric cast list (even including a Sheriff), but is a far more introspective novel and in fact is even blurbed as “a wide-ranging and ambitious document of the introvert’s condition”.This provides the author with an opportunity to construct funny dialogue involving quirky folks. We find the author a master at the way he gets his characters to talk at and with each other. 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. Someday, Bob, when you’re an aged specimen like me, and you find yourself suddenly enamored of folding the laundry or edging your lawn, remember your long-gone friend Leslie More telling you to accept whatever happiness passes your way, and in whatever form.” A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism.

If you want a summary of the book, there are a million places to read that over and over again. Therefore, I will not put it in my "review." I just want to spew my thoughts as they come... And, finally, two more comments: 1) This book is very funny, and 2) the author fully understands how important books can be in shaping a person’s life. What reader doesn’t love a book that love books? From the best-selling author of Atonement and Saturday comes the epic and intimate story of one man's life across generations and historical upheavals. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic, Roland Baines sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it. It’s things I can’t even talk about in polite conversation. And the cops won’t come unless there’s a weapon involved. You know how many ways there are to freak out without a weapon? Literally one million ways.” Because it’s a fool who argues with happiness, while the wiser man accepts it as it comes, if it comes at all.”Is it a spoiler if there’s no plot to be spoiled? Anyway, I won’t reveal the character’s identity but deWitt could’ve ended the story there because nothing that follows adds to what we already know of Bob’s life and the entire final third is completely irrelevant.