One young woman in the Pacific Northwest is fascinated by old photos and vintage items. This little novella gives us a glimpse into the reasons behind her obsession. Her path crosses with a coworker and former soldier, and they have a sweet connection. Brief but beautiful. The scene where everyone at a party has to tell a personal story was particularly memorable. ( )

This novella is about a young woman, Isabel, and one day in her life. During this day at work, she reminisces about her childhood and thinks about her attractive coworker, who is a soldier recently returned from Iraq. She buys a dress for a party and goes to a party at the end of the day.

I think I liked it. Except for the party scene - that I found boring. But then the last line was impactful and wrapped things up nicely.

I think I just don't do well with this length book. Too long to be a short story, too short to be a novel. I guess there's something satisfying in finishing a book in one day. ( )

Officially considered a novel for some reason (too short for that in my book so I will call it a novella instead), the story takes place in a single day - or the main story does anyway.

Isabel lives in Portland, Oregon as a librarian and is responsible for repairing damaged books. She spent her childhood in Alaska, lived through her parents' divorce and ended up with a taste for old things. The story follows her through a day in her life - a special day where a lot of things happen - from a love interest finally responding (just to have to leave), through finding the perfect dress for a party to the party itself. But somewhere in there, in between the mundane actions of everyday life, there are stories - Isabel's and other people's. In a novella that does not contain a lot of story on its own, we get a lot of people telling their stories - most of them sad but all of them human. And in between the stories people tell are also the stories Isabel makes up - based on a postcard, based on an old dress.

I wish the author had made this novella longer - I want to know what happens after this day. As it is, it is a slice in the life of Isabel - we get to know her past and her dreams but we don't know what happens after that. The novel ends with a yearning for a place she had never been - which reads almost like a replacement to a love that may or may not be. But then this is how life works - you do not know what happens next.

The writing is nice enough and in some places shines. The glaciers of the title tie to Isabel's memories and there is probably a deeper connection somewhere in there between the disappearing glaciers and her love for things from the past but it is almost invisible in the text - there if you look for it but too weak to actually manage to make a point. It was a nice enough novella but did not make me want to read more by the author. And I am really not fond of the modern trend for contemporary novels to leave treads dangling at their ends - while some of it may be a powerful way to end a novel, it usually ends up feeling like a cheat and if the author really had no clue how to connect them all properly. ( )

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. ( )

This is a quick and quirky book that I would recommend to anyone who wants to feel nostalgic. ( )

Glaciers is a very short and very quiet novel that meanders from past to present to dreams of the future - all in one day. Isabel, a librarian and repairer of torn and damaged books is trying to catch the eye of a co-worker while she reminisces about her childhood and the past lives of others.

Isabel is drawn to thrift stores and antique stores. She finds beauty in the cast off treasures of others - ephemera, post cards, pictures, dresses, jewelry. She is a likable main character - one that I found easy to relate to. She's a bit shy but she's also fun - someone you would like to know and have as a friend. There is sadness in her life but it won't be insurmountable.

Everyone has a story. Some people have many stories. In this book, there is time for everyone to tell their story - all in a day. ( )

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. ( )

Lovely language & beautiful capture of time and mood. The prose is finely crafted and the story — just a single ordinary day in Portland, Oregon — is simple but the poetic-like attention to detail raises the literary bar. ( )

This is a short novel of a twenty-something hipster librarian in Portland who likes a coworker, eats vegetarian, shops at secondhand stores, has artsy gay friends, day dreams about Amsterdam (a city where she's never been) and reminisces about Alaska where she lived as a young girl.

If you were to judge this book by its cover, you would see a dress on the front and assume that this was a girly book. If you did, you would be absolutely correct. I picked this book up from the library upon seeing it on the NPR 'Summer Reads Handpicked by Indie booksellers list' where it compared this novel to Paul Harding's Tinkers. While this is a book about a twenty something love sick lady and Harding's novel is about a dying man, there is a stylistic similarity. Both books juxtapose the past with the present, switching between the two. Both authors have something against quotation marks to designate dialogue. Harding's book is less linear and the better book but this one is well written and interesting for a short novel.

Now I am going to do something manly. ( )

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. ( )

Last year I discovered, rather by accident, Jac Jemc's beautiful debut novel My Only Wife, and I fell utterly in love. I recommended it to everyone I met, and still do -- it was easily my favorite book of last year.

Alexis Smith's Glaciers is that book this year. Quiet, unassuming, yet profoundly intimate and deeply moving, the whole short novel feels like a poem written in a notebook I found on a bench somewhere, an unintended invitation into someone else's life. Of course, this is a poor analogy, because the book itself offers the better one: postcards of journeys never taken but often dreamed of, these little glimpses into the lives of strangers we feel we know from a dream somewhere.

It's a glimmering jewel of a novel, and a heart-strumming first book by an author I will eagerly beg more of. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

This book moved me deeply, but I don't yet understand why. It is beautifully written. ( )

I adore books about books so was drawn to Glaciers by the blurb and the cover art. Sadly, they turned out to be the best things about this short book. The plot is wispy and vague, it just meanders along and gradually peters out with a predictable ending. It could have been so good but needs a lot more padding out. I read this over an afternoon in a coffee shop. I suppose it was better than the tabloids that were on offer in the café. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

A very quick, totally unremarkable read. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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! ( )

...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 trees...

Twenty-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 her past into today -- the day she looks for a vintage party dress and 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. ( )

http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/2012/05/review-glaciers-by-alexis-m-smith.html ( )