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    Glaciers
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    Glaciers
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    Glaciers
    Audiobook2 hours

    Glaciers

    Written by Alexis M. Smith

    Narrated by Rebecca Lowman

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    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.
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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateAug 28, 2012
    ISBN9780385362955
    Unavailable
    Glaciers
    Author

    Alexis M. Smith

    Alexis Smith grew up in Soldotna, Alaska. 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.

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    Reviews for Glaciers

    3.5/5

    144 ratings23 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A deceptively short novel portraying one day in the life of a young woman connected to the past and trying to find her future. I found this both well-written and thought provoking.
    • 4/5
      Glaciers is one of those books for me that was just a real gem of a find. While this is a novel, I also found that picking up the book and reading one of the little chapters also worked incredibly well for me. The writing and the emotions are lyrical and I hated for the book to end. I don't often read books more than once, but this one got both a sequential pass and a randomized pass. Loved so many of the individual vignettes... it'll be one that softly sticks with me.
    • 4/5
      Word of mouth picked a gem, as ever. This is a delicate, shimmering, miniature yet expansive novella about a young woman too much in love with the world. It reminded me of Woolf in its use of time and the fragile human mind, but also Jane Mendelsohn's under-appreciated AMERICAN MUSIC for its exquisitely romantic pairing of the sensitive young woman with the rough and wounded young man. (This sounds cliched and pandering, but actually it brings out the best in both characters, in both books.)

      Reading GLACIERS has the result of making the world seem somehow sweeter, more vulnerable, and more lovable for that vulnerability.
    • 2/5
      A very quick, totally unremarkable read.
    • 4/5
      Delightful. Charming. Delicate. These are the words that first come to mind as I reflect on Glaciers. There's not much substance in these 174 pages, but I was nonetheless happy to have spent the time with them. In many of the novel's short chapters, Alexis M. Smith discusses the small things, the photos and relics Isabelle cherishes; with superb skill, Smith has crafted each chapter with the same vivid detail and want for nostalgia that these photos conjure.

      There are some really wonderful sentences in this short work. And the characters, though we barely get to know them, are fresh and interesting. The story is enough to keep moving forward, though it is sparse. But I don't think the focus here should be on story. It's about images. Glaciers is a box of photographs. Sift through them. Pick out your favorites. And make up your own story to fill in what little you know.
    • 4/5
      Glaciers is a lovely, delicate read. Isabel is single, in her twenties, and works in a library repairing books. She is drawn to the nostalgia of thrift shops and anything vintage - party dresses, tea cups, postcards. She makes up stories about the people who used to inhabit her used goods, dreams of traveling to Amsterdam, reminisces about her childhood in Alaska, and pines over a boy named Stokes at work. The book is digest sized and feels like a small treasure. The print is tiny and the margins are large so there is not much writing on each page. Easily read in two short sittings, Glaciers is a glimpse into the soul of a girl who longs for more than the present.
    • 4/5
      I liked this, even though it felt a bit custom-designed to appeal to a certain 20- to 30-something female demographic. Aside from that, though, it was a lovely book -- moody and evocative, well-written.I especially liked Smith's portrait of having a crush. It occurs to me that I don't read many love stories, or rather novels with sexual love as a central concern, and that's kind of a shame because when it's done well it's so nice to be transported that way. That sense of crushing on someone is especially elusive, and not easy to get down on paper, but when it's done right it produces that same small pleasurable frisson. For all its context of glaciers, ice, and Alaska, this is a warm little book.
    • 5/5
      This is a short, exquisite book about a young girl who loves old things and her memories. Alexis Smith breathes more life into the inanimate objects she describes than many writers do into their characters. Just beautiful -- not one word wasted.
    • 5/5
      A vintage-dress-obsessed librarian who lives in Portland? Sold. Also beautifully written.
    • 4/5
      This is a good book. The story wanders between the main character's past and present. It reads more like a short story than a novel, which I liked for the scope of the plot.
    • 4/5
      Offering love and longing amongst the hipster scene in Portland, Oregon, Glaciers unfolds languidly over the course of a day as Isabel, the quiet, quirky library technician (who specializes in repairing books) decides what to wear to a party and whether or not to invite the IT tech who works across the hall from her. Beautifully detailed reminiscences of Isabel's childhood in Alaska are interspersed with stream-of-consciousness idle angst as Isabel's mind considers various unrelated thoughts throughout the day. In a way, it reminded me of later period DeLillo, particularly The Body Artist - the protagonists often contemplate things that seem mundane to most, but in their observations their own stories are told by what they notice and fail to see. This is a promising debut that will offer pleasures the reader may not realize at first, but, in retrospect, will find a kernel in their memory and fertilize it into something richer.
    • 4/5
      Isabel loves vintage clothing, old things and works in the basement of a library repairing damaged books. This is not a big splashy novel but rather a quiet, reflective one looking at one day in a life, a sort novel to read and just savor the wonderful prose. Looking forward to seeing what this author does next.
    • 4/5
      A beautifully written novel about love and loss; about perserving the past and considering the future. This is the sort of book you can sit down with and thoroughly enjoy. Take time to read sections aloud to enjoy the rhythm of the language. Holding this delicate book in your hands instead of reading it on your e-reader is a must!
    • 4/5
      This is a very interesting debut novel told in short vignettes. The main character is twenty-something woman whose life story is played out in a single day for the reader through her memories, her encounters, what she observes, what she wishes. It is a quiet story told with great understatement and a fluid way with words, but with astonishingly deep meaning floating in the gentle episodes. It's difficult to describe, but a pleasure to read. Give it a chance.
    • 3/5
      This slight novel — really more of a novella — is the debut work by Alexis Smith. It's set entirely in the course of one day in the life of Isabella, an overly serious young woman who has a strong affinity for discarded things — old postcards and photographs of unknown people, vintage clothes, secondhand furniture. Through brief flashbacks we are given some hints of how she came to be this way — growing up in Alaska, realizing she's the ugly sister, her parents' divorce. They all add up to what she is today: almost entirely directed inward, unable to express her romantic interest in a co-worker until it's too late.The writing is spare and lovely, but in some fundamental way for me there was no 'there' there in this book. It felt ultimately unsatisfying because there is no real resolution, only the end of the day. Even making allowances for it being a debut novel, it didn't quite hold together for me.One passage to give you a feel for the writing:We mean nothing, she thinks, looking at Molly looking at her. We will survive and continue to mean nothing. He will go back to the war and kill or be killed. We might appear in his dreams along with girls who went to his high school, girls who lived next door, girls who shop and work and drink beer at summer parties, girls he slept with or wanted to sleep with, girls who want to save him or be saved by him. When he dreams of them, he will open his mouth to speak and these girls will go off like bombs. Boom. Pieces of girls everywhere.
    • 3/5
      This was a quick read but most of the stories left me wanting more from the author. But I like fiction with just the right amount of detail. Leave the blanks for me to fill.
      That being said a few of the stories in this book will come back to me. Her reflections of her childhood and her relationships with her parents and sister are reveling to the character that she turns into. And while I do not prefer to read fiction that has such a void I found that a few of her stories developed the characters beautifully around the void of descriptive words that often clutter a perfectly good story.
    • 5/5
      Love the quiet, studied way that threads of the main character's story are woven in and out of past and present. Really real, and bittersweet knowledge of Life.
    • 5/5
      Love the quiet, studied way that threads of the main character's story are woven in and out of past and present. Really real, and bittersweet knowledge of Life.
    • 2/5
      The publisher compared this to Woolf, Duras, and Rhys? I'm sure even their adolescent scribblings were more learned and erudite than Glaciers. This is not to say the book isn't well written: it definitely is, but it feels too uncertain of itself many times, and at many others it felt like reading an MFA student's final project. This is chick lit targeted to the young, fashionable, hipster librarian.
    • 5/5
      Have you ever been at a loss for words, and find yourself mindlessly humming a tune that seems to encapsulate every ounce of your sentiments? After finishing this book in one sitting, the only tune that comes to mind is Billy Joel's "She's Got a Way.""She's got a light around herAnd ev'rywhere she goesA million dreams of love surround her ev'rywhere"In a stream of consciousness narrative style, Smith takes us through a day in the life of Isabel, a singleton living in Portland, who repairs damaged books in the basement of a library. Living a quiet, predictable life, her longing is channeled into her love of thrift stores, vintage clothing, and personal ephemera. Cycling between present day, and her childhood on a homestead in Alaska, Smith uses sparse, beautiful language to convey Isabel's needs and fears. Something about this novel's quiet subtleness put me in mind of the film Lars and the Real Girl. You either get it or you don't. "All these things tell a story, but is it hers? It has always been more than an aesthetic choice, holding on to the past; it’s a kind of mourning for the things that do not last. We do not last, she thinks. In the end, only the stories survive."
    • 5/5
      This book moved me deeply, but I don't yet understand why. It is beautifully written.
    • 5/5
      This was a perfect gem of a book, a story (and an author) to fall in love with! Perfectly encapsulated in one single day, this book nevertheless takes us back into the narrator Isabel’s childhood, launches us into her sweet hopes for the future, and ends in the bittersweet reality of the present. Glaciers is somewhat like Joyce’s Ulysses in its ability to make one day the embodiment of all days, but with a decidedly feminine twist. Smith’s writing is simply beautiful: It is poetic, vulnerable, dreamy and insightful—a perfect representation of the narrator herself. The story is deceptively simple; a shy girl who loves vintage clothing, the postcards of strangers, and the quiet ex-military man who works with her. But there’s so much more to Isabel, and to the novel, than seems at first glance—it’s all (as the title suggests) just underneath the surface. This book is not to be missed!
    • 5/5
      …soon she loved {cities in the Pacific Northwest} in the same way she loved the landscape of {Alaska}. Old churches were grand and solemn, just like glaciers, and dilapidated houses filled her with the same sense of sadness as a stand of leafless winter treesTwenty-eight-year-old Isabel has a fondness for things in decline, from the calving glaciers of her childhood, to thrift shops, to her job in the damaged books department of a Portland, Oregon library. This delicate novella weaves bits of Isabel’s past into today -- the day she decides to ask her co-worker, an Iraq war veteran nicknamed Spoke, on a date.“It’s never the wedding dresses, you know. We keep those, too, but only because they’re so blooming expensive. No. I’ve seen enough old ladies’ closets to know what we really hold on to. Not the till-death-do-us-part dresses. It’s those first lovely dresses: the slow-dance dresses, the good-night-kiss dresses. It’s those first pangs we hold on to.”Lovely. I look forward to more by Smith.