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From the award-winning novelist David Whitehouse, hailed by The New York Times as "a writer to watch," a tragicomic adventure about a troubled adolescent boy who escapes his small town in a stolen library-on-wheels.
"An archivist of his mother," Bobby Nusku spends his nights meticulously cataloging her hair, clothing, and other traces of the life she left behind. By day, Bobby and his best friend Sunny hatch a plan to transform Sunny, limb-by-limb, into a cyborg who could keep Bobby safe from schoolyard torment and from Bobby's abusive father and his bleach-blonde girlfriend. When Sunny is injured in a freak accident, Bobby is forced to face the world alone.
Out in the neighborhood, Bobby encounters Rosa, a peculiar girl whose disability invites the scorn of bullies. When Bobby takes Rosa home, he meets her mother, Val, a lonely divorcee, whose job is cleaning a mobile library. Bobby and Val come to fill the emotional void in each other's lives, but their bond also draws unwanted attention. After Val loses her job and Bobby is beaten by his father, they abscond in the sixteen-wheel bookmobile. On the road they are joined by Joe, a mysterious but kindhearted ex-soldier. This "puzzle of people" will travel across England, a picaresque adventure that comes to rival those in the classic books that fill their library-on-wheels.
At once tender, provocative and darkly funny, Mobile Library is a fable about the intrinsic human desire to be loved and understood—and about one boy's realization that the kinds of adventures found in books can happen in real life. It is the ingenious second novel by a writer whose prose has been hailed as "outlandishly clever" (The New York Times) and "deceptively effortless" (The Boston Globe).
"As the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly bewildering to readers accustomed to novels that are grounded in reality. An offbeat narrative that struggles to gain traction with adult readers." - Kirkus
"When stacked against the literary gems Bobby and his crew read throughout, from The Little Prince to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Whitehouse's novel feels ordinary." - Publishers Weekly
"An agreeably old-fashioned story with likable characters and just enough suspense to keep the pages turning. And who can resist a novel about a mobile library?" - Booklist
"A great, tender-hearted story about stories. It's a book about what books can give us, and how they can add to our adventure – or even take us on one. A lovely read." - Matt Haig, author of The Humans
This information about Mobile Library was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
David Whitehouse's first novel, Bed, winner of the 2012 Betty Trask Prize, has been published in eighteen countries. He has several TV and film projects in development with Film4, Warp, the BBC, and others. He writes regularly for the Guardian, and The Times, and is currently the Editor-at-Large of ShortList magazine.
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Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering.
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