Glaciers

By Alexis Smith
(Tin House Books, Paperback, 9781935639206, 112pp.)

Publication Date: January 2012

Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Paperback

Categories: Literary

Selected by Indie Booksellers for the January 2012 Indie Next List

"Lyrical and luminous."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“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.”—Lisa Shea, ELLE Magazine

"How appropriate that on the last page of this spare, beautifully written first novel, one character asks another, “Tell us a story—about longing.” For longing defines the life of Isabel, who grows up on Cook Inlet in Alaska and, after a trip to towering Seattle, begins collecting postcards from other cities, among them Paris, Budapest, and Barcelona. As an adult, Isabel finds a postcard depicting Amsterdam at a junk store she frequents—she loves old things; her job is restoring damaged books at a library—and is astonished to find that the postcard was actually sent. The card carries a message that inspires her to construct a story about sender and recipient. Isabel needs to work a little harder to construct her own story, though; an ungainly child, she’s still tentative about relationships and gingerly approaches Spoke, a colleague at the library who served in Iraq. A series of events, one involving a note about Amsterdam left in a book she’s repairing, wheels her gracefully in a different direction."—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

"Glaciers, Alexis Smith’s brilliant debut novel, is filled with kaleidoscopic pleasures.
Using prose as clear as pure, cold air, Smith moves the narrative vertically as well as horizontally, each ticking minute yielding more insights into a young woman’s life revealed over one single day. The past, present, and imaginary future stream into beautifully unstable geometries: Isabel's childhood snows from her youth in Alaska are juxtaposed against her adult trip to a vintage thrift store; her hopes for an evening party push against the echoes of war that haunt a young soldier whom she loves. Line by line, in and out of time, this is a haunted, joyful, beautiful book--a true gift."
—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!

"Alexis M. Smith's Glaciers is a quietly powerful fairy tale. Smith's voice, patient and understated and precise captures the poetry of loss and longing." —Cara Hoffman, author of So Much Pretty

"A delicate and piercing first novel. Glaciers is like a vintage dress: charming, understated and glinting with memories of loneliness and love."
—Jane Mendelsohn, author of I was Amelia Earhart and American Music

"I cannot easily remember the last time I've been so deeply moved as in this quiet treasure."—Douglas A. Martin, author of Once You Go Back

“Glaciers is a carefully precise and beautiful meditation on one young woman’s restless heart. It resonates like a haunting postcard from someone else’s life.”
—Kevin Sampsell, author of A Common Pornography