After 50 years of working at the same branch library in Portland, Oregon, Bob Comet --- now in his early 70s --- is struggling a bit with retirement. He tends to walk aimlessly through the city for miles every day, interacting with few people but observing them: “He communicated with the world partly by walking through it, but mainly by reading about it.”

Bob’s status as an observer is put to the test when, on one of his rambles, he encounters an elderly woman in a seemingly catatonic state in front of the cooler at 7-Eleven. He helps lead her back to the senior center where (according to her badge) she lives, and there he finds himself reluctantly drawn to the residents and visitors at the small facility. His early efforts at volunteering go somewhat awry, but he establishes relationships with them regardless --- relationships that lead readers into episodes from his past that help explain the man he’s become.

"THE LIBRARIANIST is quietly wrenching and broadly funny by turns. In the end, though, it’s most notable as a lifelong character study of an overtly unremarkable man who nevertheless has seen his share of drama."

Two of these episodes could stand on their own as short stories. One particularly Twain-esque saga involves an 11-year-old Bob, who is running away for four days to the dilapidated Hotel Elba, where he finds himself drawn into the orbit of two charismatic and cantankerous thespians preparing to put on a show. This brief adventure clearly makes a mark on his psyche, as the whole novel opens with him waking up from a recurring dream recounting his time at the hotel. The significance of this vignette is not entirely apparent until the very end of the book, so some readers may find themselves growing impatient with his misadventures here, if they’re not immediately charmed by the winsome cast of characters he encounters.

The more emotionally affecting flashback is to Bob’s young adulthood. As a newly minted librarian, he has a new best friend, Ethan, and a love interest, Connie, at the same time. Inexperienced with relationships like these, and convinced that neither the vivacious Connie nor the louche Ethan could really like a staid person such as himself for any length of time, he does not want them to meet one another. But of course they do, and Bob’s worst fears play out in understated yet heartbreaking ways, the repercussions of which persist for decades.

Given the title and even its jacket art, readers might (incorrectly) assume that THE LIBRARIANIST participates in a genre of novels about lonely, bookish people belatedly finding love, redemption or community. Those who have read Patrick deWitt’s previous books probably would harbor no such delusions; though not satirical like some of his prior work, it’s also decidedly unsentimental. Bob’s evolution as a character is not dramatic or particularly inspiring. But it's subtly satisfying, and its oddly moving final scene --- set during an awkward Halloween encounter between elementary school children and the center’s senior citizens --- finds Bob coming into his own.

THE LIBRARIANIST is quietly wrenching and broadly funny by turns. In the end, though, it’s most notable as a lifelong character study of an overtly unremarkable man who nevertheless has seen his share of drama.