Glaciers

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More About This Book

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Smith’s debut unspools in delicate links of linear thought, told (mostly) in deceptively simple sentences embedded in the consciousness of Isabel, born in the Pacific Northwest and raised in Alaska with her older sister. Isabel dreams of Amsterdam and, “though she has never been, and probably will never go,” she believes everything is perfect there. The story ostensibly covers a single day, but Isabel’s recorded memories reach back to childhood, with incidents in between like a camping trip, an interaction with an astrologer, and a consequential encounter with an immense glacier. Isabel’s love of books leads her to get a job at the library, where she falls for co-worker “Spoke,” an Iraq war veteran whose sudden re-enlistment casts a long shadow, turning Isabel introspective at the festive party she’d planned to attend with him: “Spoke is already halfway across the country, where people are making breakfast, letting dogs out onto dewy lawns, boarding busses and trains for downtowns, lining up in coffee shops,” she thinks, while “n Amsterdam, it is already a lovely afternoon, the leaves turning, fall about to break.” This slim book’s lovely design respects and enhances Smith’s voice, with ample white space on every page and a general eschewing of commas and quotation marks. Lyrical and luminous. (Jan.)
Library Journal
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 grew up on Cook Inlet in Alaska and, after a trip to towering Seattle, began 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 she is astonished to find that the postcard was actually sent. The message on the back of the card inspires her to construct a story about sender and recipient. Isabel needs to work a little harder to construct her own story, though; once 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. VERDICT Not for those who like big, splashy reads, this book is just the thing for more meditative readers who savor language and quiet reflection.—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781935639206
  • Publisher: Tin House Books
  • Publication date: 1/17/2012
  • Pages: 112
  • Sales rank: 101,428
  • Series: A Tin House New Voice
  • Product dimensions: 5.00 (w) x 7.20 (h) x 0.60 (d)

Interviews & Essays

A Conversation with Alexis Smith
How long have you been working on Glaciers? Do you remember how it began? How has it evolved from the beginning?
I have been working on Glaciers for the last five years, with some breaks. It began as a series of prose poems about my childhood in Alaska. I was in my second or third semester of the MFA in Writing program at Goddard College. During the winter residencies I would fly out to Vermont from Portland for a week of true winter. Walking through the snowy woods to the library, listening to the creaking trees and feeling the cold on my face, really brought me back to being a kid on my grandparents' homestead outside Kenai.
The story has evolved a lot. When I started writing I was a footloose twenty-something bookseller, and now I'm a homebody thirty-something single mom. In the early days of writing, there was so much more angst--mine and Isabel's. The first year as a mother knocked the impulse to navel-gaze right out of me. My focus, and Isabel's, turned outward, to other people's stories.
Many writers have a few practice novels in the drawer. Is this your first novel?
No other novels in the drawer--just drafts of this one. This was my practice novel, in many ways. I learned so much about writing and being a writer from this book. Practical things like, how to write at the laundromat (and other unlikely places), and how to trick your brain into forgetting the internet (key: keep a big dictionary handy). And, other things, too--structural and stylistic and thematic things--but the most important thing being that writing a novel is more about getting shit done than about being a certain kind of thoughtful, articulate, creative person.
Why did you choose to have the novel take place over only one day? What benefits do you have as a writer with this structure?
I'll admit to being a big fan of Mrs. Dalloway, so that was a huge influence. I love how Virginia Woolf uses the present as a point of reference for the past. In a diurnal narrative, the point of reference is pretty static. Not much changes in the characters' lives in the course of a day, so it's an interesting way to examine memories and how they play in the background of daily life, informing relationships and feeding desires. There may not be room for big drama, but there's plenty of room for the smaller details that get lost in multi-generational sagas.
Tell us about the title? How does the environment figure into this book?
My generation came of age at the same time as the idea of global warming. We entered adulthood almost simultaneously with the passing of the Kyoto Protocol by the United Nations. For me, having grown up in spitting distance of actual glaciers, the idea of glaciers disappearing was shocking. Glaciers seemed like living things, to me: they grow each year, or at least did for millennia; they move and have their own inertia; they are record keepers, time capsules; and they have shaped the earth's surface over time.
All of those things can also be said for human beings. Human populations moving over the planet, over centuries, have shaped the earth with cities and infrastructure, mining, etc. We move where the resources and food are, carrying things with us, leaving other things behind. The glaciers had their day in shaping the planet, and now we are having ours. It just so happens that all of these cycles eventually come to an end, and ours is of our own making. Isabel is reckoning with the intersection of those stories: the smaller human stories (loves, losses, change), and the bigger historical and environmental stories (wars, natural disasters).
I was worried for a long time that the title was too oblique, that it would come off as pretentious--or worse, too sober--for a story about a girl who really just wants to find the perfect dress and win the love of her work crush. But, somehow, it always felt like the only title that would do.
Who have you discovered lately?
Easy: Sarah Goldstein, whose first book, Fables, came out this year from Tarpaulin Sky Press. It is a gorgeous, haunting book along the lines of Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's Madeleine is Sleeping: brief, evocative chapters that go strange, dark places and occasionally leave you stunned. Fans of Kelly Link and Karen Russell would love Fables as well. Though, honestly, Goldstein immediately reminded me of the French poet, Liliane Giraudon (her out-of-print Sun & Moon Classics collection, Fur, is worth seeking out) who is a master of the uncanny modern fairy tale.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4
( 11 )

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Sort by: Showing all of 11 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted February 23, 2012

    Great!

    This is a great book. Love it!

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 7, 2012

    Skadi

    A beautiful silver and red shewolf sidles in. Ikaru right? I belong to fang pack but am a drifter at heart. I thought i would try and talk to other wolves. So hey. Sighs.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted May 6, 2012

    Ikaru

    Ok

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted May 6, 2012

    War Zone

    Can you be the ancestor pack?

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted March 8, 2012

    more from this reviewer

    The book was okay. The characters were unlikable. The story was

    The book was okay. The characters were unlikable. The story was quirky. The premise was interesting because it dealt with icebergs, libraries, and unrequitted love. However, the plot fell a bit flat.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted April 14, 2012

    No text was provided for this review.

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    Posted March 1, 2012

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 9, 2012

    No text was provided for this review.

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    Posted February 2, 2012

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    Posted May 19, 2012

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    Posted November 14, 2011

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