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    Mobile Library: A Novel
    Mobile Library: A Novel
    Mobile Library: A Novel
    Audiobook7 hours

    Mobile Library: A Novel

    Written by David Whitehouse

    Narrated by Tim Gerard Reynolds

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    From the award-winning novelist David Whitehouse, hailed by The New York Times as “a writer to watch,” a tragicomic adventure about a troubled adolescent boy who escapes his small town in a stolen library-on-wheels.

    “An archivist of his mother,” Bobby Nusku spends his nights meticulously cataloging her hair, clothing, and other traces of the life she left behind. By day, Bobby and his best friend Sunny hatch a plan to transform Sunny, limb-by-limb, into a cyborg who could keep Bobby safe from schoolyard torment and from Bobby’s abusive father and his bleach-blonde girlfriend. When Sunny is injured in a freak accident, Bobby is forced to face the world alone.

    Out in the neighborhood, Bobby encounters Rosa, a peculiar girl whose disability invites the scorn of bullies. When Bobby takes Rosa home, he meets her mother, Val, a lonely divorcee, whose job is cleaning a mobile library. Bobby and Val come to fill the emotional void in each other’s lives, but their bond also draws unwanted attention. After Val loses her job and Bobby is beaten by his father, they abscond in the sixteen-wheel bookmobile. On the road they are joined by Joe, a mysterious but kindhearted ex-soldier. This “puzzle of people” will travel across England, a picaresque adventure that comes to rival those in the classic books that fill their library-on-wheels.

    At once tender, provocative and darkly funny, Mobile Library is a fable about the intrinsic human desire to be loved and understood—and about one boy’s realization that the kinds of adventures found in books can happen in real life. It is the ingenious second novel by a writer whose prose has been hailed as “outlandishly clever” (The New York Times) and “deceptively effortless” (The Boston Globe).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJan 20, 2015
    ISBN9781442377585
    Author

    David Whitehouse

    David Whitehouse is an award-winning novelist, journalist and screenwriter. His first novel, Bed, won the 2012 Betty Trask Award and his second novel, Mobile Library, won the 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Originally from Warwickshire, he now lives in Margate.

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    Reviews for Mobile Library

    3.5/5

    48 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I don’t know where to start with this one, so I may as well just say it right up front: Mobile Library is one of the more disappointing novels I’ve read in a while. Perhaps that’s because it came so highly recommended from a fellow reader whose judgment I trust. Or maybe it’s because the novel reminds me so much of eating cotton candy at a roadside carnival – all sugar and air, with nothing (including its main characters) of any real substance in the recipe.The novel’s plot, although it is executed in a manner more suitable to a YA novel than to one aimed at adults, is one with potential. Consider the characters: a boy constantly bullied at school and his more physically imposing friend who vows to protect him by transforming himself into a cyborg; the bullied boy’s abusive father; the little girl (probably a Down’s Syndrome child) the boy meets one day; the little girl’s mother who so appreciates the boy befriending her daughter that she vows to protect him from his father no matter what that costs her; the young man who falls in love with the woman; that young man’s vindictive and crazed elderly father; and, finally, the young policeman charged with the task of rounding them all up.It is no accident that this cast is reminiscent of characters from a fairy tale. Unfortunately, that resemblance is primarily because they have about as much emotional depth as characters found in a Brothers Grimm tale. The only ones of them that even approached feeling real in print are the young mother and her beautiful little girl. The rest of them are better suited to a comic book setting.I do think that, maybe with the exception of a bit of strong language, Mobile Library would be a good read for middle school students – and certainly that the language in it is not so offensive that it could not be read by high school students looking for a modern morality tale. One final thought: Mobile Library is set in England and Scotland, and David Whitehouse is a British author. However, the author presents his story in so generic a fashion that readers hoping to be immersed in a British setting are likely to be disappointed. Cotton candy, neither the real thing, nor its literary version, much appeal to me these days.
    • 3/5
      fiction (PG/PG-13, adult situations, violence and mild language). Enjoyed, but slightly taken aback by all the stealing.
    • 4/5
      Bobby Nusku is a peculiar 12 year old boy whose father is abusive. Bobby is also small for his age, so his friend Sunny decides to be his protector. Sunny believes he can become a cyborg to protect Bobby. Things, of course, do not go well with this plan. Bobby meets Rosa, a young, sweet girl with a disability. Like Bobby, she gets picked on by 3 bullies. Bobby reports the attack to Rosa’s mother, Val. Val feels sorry for Bobby when she notes the abuse he endures from his father. She befriends Bobby and takes him and Rosa on an adventure, taking the Mobile Library that Val cleans as their getaway.Along the way, they meet Joe and Baron. This is a story of love and adventure, and understanding the true meaning of family. It also allows you to escape into the world of books and a world created in your imagination. #MobileLibrary #DavidWhitehouse
    • 4/5
      When I was a child I eagerly awaited the fortnightly visits from the bright green Mobile Library bus that parked just outside my door, so I couldn't resist this title.Mobile Library by David Whitehouse is the big hearted, quirky story of twelve year old, Bobby Nusku, abused by his drunken father and bullied by his schoolmates. His only friend's attempts to defend him end in disaster and Bobby is alone again, pining for his missing mother, until he meets Rosa, and her mother, Val. Val, the cleaner of a mobile library, shows Bobby how books can help him to escape the miserable confines of his world, and when everything goes wrong, only the mobile library can save them all.I've mentioned before that I dislike prologue's. Whitehouse starts Mobile Library with 'The End' and it wasn't until at least halfway through the book that I forgave him. Though it took a while, I eventually got caught up in Bobby's story as the author brought it to life with good humour, warmth and poignancy.A charming, but offbeat, story, Mobile Library is a novel about friendship, family, love and stories, a tale of adventure and danger, heroes and villains, not-so-happy and happy endings.