My review of The Librarianist by Patrick DeWitt

 

In the novel, The Librarianist, Bob Comet, a career librarian, experiences love, betrayal, loss, and a wildly bizarre adventure—all without much spirit of adventure. As a character, Bob is likeable enough. He’s highly intelligent and lives life sensibly putting one foot in front of the other, doing what needs to be done. I felt, however, that I never knew him. He accepts life’s ups and downs with such equanimity as to be a spectator to his own life. I had expected a person who loves books to exhibit a lively curiosity, literature-gained wisdom, and perhaps vivid ideas and emotions. But throughout my reading of The Librarianist, I felt like the son in the Papaoutai (by Stromae) music video, who keeps trying to dance with a mannequin. Bob Comet never came alive for me.

 

Was author Patrick DeWitt trying to show that early childhood trauma, which Bob had back in the 1940s when people didn’t call it that, essentially mummifies a living person?  Probably an unlikely stretch. As events of The Librarianist unfolded, I felt a range of emotions for the characters, even if Bob seemed mostly unmoved. And I will say that this novel contains the most shocking plot twist I’ve ever read. As in, wow, bravo!

My review of This Is Happiness, a novel by Niall Williams

 

What a pleasure to read Niall Williams’ novel, This Is Happiness. The simple story is narrated as memoir by 78-year-old Noel (Noe) Crowe remembering a significant few of his late-teen years. They were spent living in tiny Faha parish, Ireland, with his grandparents, who at that time also housed a man named Christy, ostensibly in Faha as part of a team of workers who would bring electricity to the village. Trying to find his own purpose in life, 17-year-old Noe is fascinated by middle-aged Christy, especially after discovering Christy was really in Faha to right long-ago wrongs.

 

Even as a teen, Noe is sensitive and insightful, and by the time he sets to writing This Is Happiness about those years in Faha, his wisdom is finely honed. He looks back on his naïve self, his grandparents, Christy, and Faha’s people with tenderness and a touch of humor. Because Niall Williams’ writing is lyrical, I felt I was seeing Noe’s pains, quandaries, and discoveries as art. And a takeaway—not that Williams intended a lesson—is that even my life’s difficulties are beautiful when seen through a lens of kindness and wonder.

 

This book is absolutely lovely. I recommend it to anyone who appreciates a turn of phrase or human interest stories or life in Ireland or quirky childhood memories—or “generosity of spirit” (Noe’s observation of Christy). I leave you with a few sample quotes from This Is Happiness by Niall Williams.

 

“Sometime maybe you’ve had the sense that something has arrived in your life, and what it is you can’t tell, but it’s as though a gate you haven’t checked in a while must have blown open, and without even going to look you know it has. You’ve no proof, nothing you can point to, but you know: something has blown open.” [page 80]

 

“I couldn’t speak to beauty then, but I could to dignity and bearing and deep quietude in her. Sorrow, I thought …” [page 133]

 

“The two men were Bat from back the road who came in, God bless all, with cap low and eyes down, and Mossie O Keefe who was the Job of Faha, a man so hexed, not only dogged but whaled by bad fortune, that eventually, by a Fahaean genius for latitude in language, his initials became the thing people thought when things were not OK. You hit your thumb with a hammer, you went over on your ankle, you thought of O Keefe and said, ‘OK!’” [pages 239 and 240]

 

“As I’ve said, I am keenly aware I am dealing in antiquities. When you are born in one century and find yourself walking around in another there’s a certain infirmity to your footing. May we all be so lucky to live long enough to see our time turn to fable.” [page 55]