Bob Comet, a retired librarian … brings to mind John Williams’ Stoner and Thoreau’s chestnut about ‘lives of quiet desperation,’ but it is telling that deWitt chooses to capture him at times when his life takes a turn. A quietly effective and moving character study.
Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW
Gripping, random, and totally alive.
Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
A bittersweet tale of a retired librarian … deWitt imbues the people he meets with color and quirks, leaving a trail of sparks … This one gradually takes hold until it won’t let go.
Publishers Weekly
The Librarianist is another charmer from an author who knows how to delight.
Bookpage
A page-turner… an entertaining menagerie of strange characters and numerous apt and evocative phrases. And the divergent possibilities in the novel’s ambiguous ending scene give readers two very different stories to ponder after the final word.
Willamette Week
Bright and entertaining from beginning to end.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
deWitt’s great gift lies in his ability to depict the Everyman in extremis – heroism hidden in plain sight.
The Daily Telegraph
A touching, affectionate novel showing, without cliché or agenda, that engagement in old age is a courageous act to be applauded.
Big Issue
deWitt’s writing and endearing characters create a memorable world.
Los Angeles Times
deWitt is at his best writing dramatic and comedic scenes … He’s a writer who plays with the conventions of the realist novel.
British Columbia Review
The Librarianist is a novel that’s interested in happiness … There are elements to be savoured in the nuance of particulars on the page.
Zoomer Magazine
deWitt’s great achievement is in creating, perhaps for the first time, a character whose very ordinariness is his defining feature … The aching heart of The Librarianist is a piercing seriocomic character study of isolation and abandonment.
Toronto Star
A character study of almost defiant gentleness.
The Times
deWitt is one of the great literary ventriloquists, producing funny, quirky, richly imagined novels shaped each time by a wildly different narrative voice.
Daily Mail
This novel begs to be read.
Booklist
Filled with profound heartbreak and humour … After just a few pages of acclimatization to his style, we’re immersed in deWitt’s world.
Winnipeg Free Press
Utterly charming … Characters come alive immediately on the page and there’s simply an energy to deWitt’s books that make them pleasurable to spend time with.
Chicago Tribune
Personal and existential ... deWitt cobbles together a complicated but heartfelt treatise on introversion and the value of a life lived through books ... [The Librarianist] never strays far from what makes his novels so delightful: his dexterity with language, his interest in what happens when words fail, and the rare moments where they land.
Walrus
Quirky [and] Incredibly unique … Not only entertaining, but award-worthy.
I've Read This Blog
DeWitt is a fabulous stylist and unquestionably gifted storyteller … The Librarianist stands out most when [he] explores the depths of human relationships and traces the evolutionary development of one man for whom fellow humans have led to unplanned disappointments.
Canadian Notes and Queries
