-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A Novel
by Alexis Smith
Isabel is a single, twentysomething thrift-store shopper and collector of remnants, things cast off or left behind by others. Glaciers follows Isabel through a day in her life in which work with damaged books in the basement of a library, unrequited love for the former soldier who fixes her computer, and dreams of the perfect vintage dress move over a backdrop of deteriorating urban architecture and the imminent loss of the glaciers she knew as a young girl in Alaska.
Glaciers unfolds internally, the action shaped by Isabel's sense of history, memory, and place, recalling the work of writers such as Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, and Virginia Woolf. For Isabel, the fleeting moments of one day can reveal an entire life. While she contemplates loss and the intricate fissures it creates in our lives, she accumulates the stories - the remnants - of those around her and she begins to tell her own story.
Paperback original
"Starred Review. This slim book's lovely design respects and enhances Smith's voice, with ample white space on every page and a general eschewing of commas and quotation marks. Lyrical and luminous." - Publishers Weekly
"Not for those who like big, splashy reads, this book is just the thing for more meditative readers who savor language and quiet reflection." - Library Journal
"An Alaska childhood and dreams of faraway cities such as Amsterdam inform Alexis M. Smith's Glaciers, a delicate debut novel set in Portland, Oregon - 'a slick fog of a city… drenched in itself' - that reveals in short, memory-soaked postcards of prose a day in the life of twentysomething library worker Isabel." - Elle Magazine
"Line by line, in and out of time, this is a haunted, joyful, beautiful book - a true gift." - Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!
This information about Glaciers 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.
Alexis Margaret Smith grew up in Soldotna, Alaska, and Seattle, Washington. She attended Mount Holyoke College, Portland State University, and Goddard College, where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing. Her writing has appeared in Tarpaulin Sky and on Powells.com. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with her son, two cats, and their beloved view of the St. Johns bridge. Visit her online at www.alexismsmith.com.
If you liked Glaciers, try these:
by Hari Kunzru
Published 2025
From one of the sharpest voices in fiction today, a profound and enthralling novel about beauty and power, capital, art and those who devote their lives to creating it
by Laura Sims
Published 2024
From the author of Looker comes this "compulsive and unforgettable novel" (Mona Awad) of razor-sharp suspense about two local librarians whose lives become dangerously intertwined.
by Kristin Dwyer
Published 2024
"A complete knockout. Readers will be thinking of this story long after they finish the final page." —Adalyn Grace, New York Times bestselling author of Belladonna
The fact of knowing how to read is nothing, the whole point is knowing what to read.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
