Patrick deWitt is one of my favourite novelists working today because his previous four books were all fantastic. So The Librarianist was always going to be a must-read and one of my most anticipated novels of 2023. It’s quite disappointing then to say this was utterly terrible. It went from being one of the most anticipated to one of the biggest let-downs of the year.
There isn’t really a story, just a bunch of things that happen to the main character across certain points in his life that don’t add up to anything. Bob Comet is our main character. He’s a retired librarian who decides to help out at the local old folks’ home, curating a selection of his favourite stories to read to the residents - and then he finds out one of the residents’ identities, which holds great importance to him.
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.
For example, we’re told early on that Bob’s wife ran off with his best friend when they were all young and he never remarried. Fine - but the entire middle of the novel is the story of how this happened. And guess what? Besides fleshing out the wife and best friend, to no effect, we get to read in excruciatingly dull detail what we already know. The wife and best friend run off and get married. So what’s the point? I really don’t know.
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!
The first act is fine, the writing throughout is decent, but the narrative overall is a meandering, go-nowhere shrug of a story. Rarely entertaining and often frustratingly tedious, I definitely don’t recommend this one whether or not you’re a fan of the author, though, if you are, you’re in for a shock that this is by the same writer who gave us great novels like Ablutions and Undermajordomo Minor. Patrick deWitt’s other novels are well worth checking out if you’ve never read him before - The Librarianist is an unexpected misfire.
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