The Librarianist

 
　　一個終生奉獻給文學的人，卻忽略了自己的人生經歷已然足夠為一本曠世巨作
 
　　71歲的鮑柏是位退休的圖書館館員，他沒有任何朋友，也沒有伴侶小孩（妻子某天跟著他最好的朋友跑了），晚年獨居在母親遺留下來的薄荷綠的小木屋裡，伴著大大小小的書本們，在奧勒岡的這個小鎮裡度過。
 
　　這天一早鮑柏例行性地到鎮上散步，卻遇見和自己差不多歲數的老奶奶，穿著粉紅色的休閒服，一臉疑惑地盯著便利商店的冰箱瞧。原來這位老奶奶平時居住在鎮上的長者照護中心，不小心迷了路，於是鮑柏決定陪她走回中心。這舉動讓鮑柏原本獨居的老年生活產生了重大轉變，他決定開始擔任起照護中心的志工。透過接觸並進一步和這些同儕交流，鮑柏人生中一段段悲傷卻也繽紛的過往，在讀者眼前揭開序幕：11歲的男孩在逃家之後的冒險、20歲出頭的青年遇見至愛又失去她的往事，以及發現一生志業的喜悅。作者派崔克．德威特以獨到的幽默感與同理心，將邊緣人物擺放在故事的中心，讓讀者得以欣賞看似平凡人生裡頭的種種精彩樣貌。(文／博客來外文館)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

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.