Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2012
112 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
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.
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