Inside Voices

Patrick deWitt’s The Librarianist is, as the novel’s title suggests, about a librarian. As the obscure word “librarianist” further ­suggests, working in a library can be more than just a job. It can be something of an art, a calling.

This fun, messy novel — a major departure for deWitt in both setting and subject matter — works backwards in time, from the opening section of 2006, when the retired librarian Bob Comet has become something of a hermit, to the dissolution of his marriage years before, and into deepest childhood, all in a picaresque, scattershot attempt to answer a central question: “Why read at all? Why does anybody do it in the first place? Why do I?”

Although this is the third time deWitt has set a novel in the American West (both Ablutions and The Sisters Brothers take place in California), it is the first time we find ourselves in deWitt’s chosen home of Portland, Oregon. His love for the city is everywhere: how he...