The Night Bookmobile

by

Audrey NIFFENEGGER

Graphic Novel  – 40 p.

ABOUT THE BOOK

As I often arrive too early for work, I browse through shelves – as if I didn’t know what to read next!! Yesterday, this book cover attracted my attention on the Graphic Novel shelf. Don’t judge a book by its cover? I started reading it, and was so hooked that I finished it today. I reuse is the Booklist’s description of it, which is nicely done:

Niffenegger’s love for and wariness about libraries is threaded through her best-selling first novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003), and blossoms poisonously in her first graphic novella. An artist given to elegantly eerie and clever drawings, as seen in her two illustrated novels, Niffenegger makes supple use of the graphic format in this pensive and unnerving story. Alexandra is out walking late one night on a quiet Chicago street after a fight with her boyfriend when she happens upon an old Winnebago that turns out to be a magical mystery bookmobile open between “dusk and dawn,” and piloted by Robert, a gentleman librarian who serves tea. Even more strangely, its collection comprises every book Alexandra has ever read. She is galvanized. She looks for the bookmobile every night and longs to work with Robert. Years go by. Alexandra reads incessantly and becomes a librarian. Yet still she is refused a place on the bookmobile, until one especially grim night. With beautifully complex perspectives, lustrous and moody colors, and refined expressiveness, Niffenegger has created a haunting cautionary tale about solitude, obsession, and the unfathomable power of books. Originally serialized in the Guardian in England, this is the first provocative volume in a larger work titled The Library. While the book is best suited for adult collections, teens who like classy and psychologically subtle spooky tales will shiver happily over this gorgeous short story as well. –Donna Seaman

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Audrey Niffenegger is the author of the international bestseller The Time Traveler’s Wife, as well as Her Fearful Symmetry. She is also the author and illustrator of two Abrams “novels-in-pictures,” The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress. She lives in Chicago.

MY OWN THOUGHTS

I was hooked by the topic, books, with the mysterious component, finding a library which contains all the books YOU read, as well as by the illustration, neat on classy background. I was a bit surprised by the outcome, seeing where Alexandra’s obsession led her – of course I won’t tell you! I was absolutely not prepared for it. There’s an interesting After Words part where the author explains the origin of this Graphic Novel.
It was fun also to see Alexandra roaming through Chicago streets, all familiar names. I had started last year The Time Traveler’s Wife, and abandoned it, after reading this one I may give it another try.

I don’t often read Graphic Novels, because it seems that most of them are violent in content and form, but from time to time I stumble upon an original one. This one seems to be the first for a series to come. I’m looking forward to discovering more by the same author-illustrator

FIRST LINE:
The first time I saw the Night Bookmobile, I was walking down Ravenswood Avenue at four c’clock in the morning.

LAST LINE:
And that, dear Reader, is how I came to work at The Library

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK YET?
DO YOU FEEL LIKE READING THIS BOOK?

DO YOU LIKE READING GRAPHIC NOVELS?

WHICH ONE IS YOUR FAVORITE?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

What I am reading now?

-Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor’s son, by Sholem Aleichem
–The Canterbury Tales, by Chaucer (Audiobook)
–Light from the Christian East, by James R. Payton
–A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, by Barbara Tuchman