However, some of that was buried in the next section. Bob runs away and meets a bunch of random characters that I didn’t connect with. This section seemed to drag on and on. The final third is another time jump to Bob’s childhood where he meets a pair of travelling actors and he sort of helps them in their local production. Again: what’s the point? No idea. And this is by far the most boring part of the story too and the easiest cut because it has the least to do with anything. But we get it all for no reason. What a boring waste of time!

In contrast to them all is Bob, a “steady, hand-on-the-tiller type”, a man possessed of a “natural enjoyment of modest accomplishment”, a man firmly set at a midpoint between extremes. The Librarianist, among other things, is an exploration of how a man might end up so determinedly mild and middling: “Bob had not been ­particularly good or bad in his life. Like many, like most, he rode the center line, going out of his way to perform damage against the un­deserving but never arcing toward helping the deserving, either.” DeWitt’s great gift lies in his ability to depict the Everyman in extremis – heroism hidden in plain sight. Okay, but if she starts freaking out, can you try to get her through the doors?” The cashier made a corralling gesture, arms out. “Once she’s in the parking lot she’s out of my domain.” 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. 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."This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by Sadly, this book is a bit painful for me. The book is really slow paced, and, if I was editor, I would have trimmed it significantly. 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. Behind Bob Comet's straight-man facade 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. Bob Comet, deWitt’s sepia-toned hero, is 71 years old, healthy, tidy and “not unhappy.” Since retiring from the public library where he spent his entire professional career, he’s enjoyed a life of almost uninterrupted solitude in the house his mother left to him decades earlier. “He had no friends, per se,” deWitt writes. “He communicated with the world partly by walking through it, but mainly by reading about it. Bob had read novels exclusively and dedicatedly from childhood and through to the present.”

I absolutely adored it. I loved Bob - his position over to the side of charisma and horribleness, out of the game, his notions and his demeanour ... This beautiful book took me far away from all my concerns. It's so wonderful, soothing and heartbreaking 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. Memorable characters and a strain of burlesque comedy swirl through this story spanning the life of a retired librarian ... deWitt takes us on a waltzer of a ride, twisting through Bob's life He took her gently by the arm, pointing her in the direction of the center. Every ten or fifteen steps she paused and groaned, but her resistance was minor, and they made their plodding advancement against the weather. She wanted to go into every storefront they passed, and so Bob had to repeatedly correct her path; each time he did this she became tense and made further groaning noises. “Sorry, Chip,” he told her. “I wish we could stop and browse but they’ll be worrying about you, and we don’t want them to worry, do we? No, let’s keep on, we’re almost there.”Bob is 71 years of age “and not unhappy”. He goes for long walks. He has no friends. He has no family. He has spent his life as a reader. “He communicated with the world partly by walking through it, but mainly by reading about it. Bob had read novels exclusively and dedicatedly from childhood and through to the present.” Bob’s life is at a bit of a dead end. The Librarianist is about Bob, a seventy-one-year-old retired librarian. He's a placid, forgettable man, a loner, who supposedly prefers living life via novels Ultimately, this is an original, well-written novel. It left me with a sad feeling for Bob, who had missed out on so much in his life. What makes a good story, the elements within or the teller? I lean more towards the teller. A good teller is able to bring the simplest story to life, is able to turn it around and examine its elements going deep and deeper if he wants, showing what makes up the whole, the nuances, the consequences. Many thanks to Ecco and NetGalley for the digital review copy of this novel. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. This novel is due to be released on July 4, 2023.