The Night Bookmobile - Hardcover

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.

*Starred Review* 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