Glaciares

by Alexis M. Smith, Mercedes Cebrián (Translator)

Isabel tiene veintiocho años y vive en Portland, en la última planta de un edificio casi centenario en compañía de su gato sin nombre. Adora su trabajo en la Biblioteca Pública restaurando viejos libros heridos por el paso del tiempo y no tiene la menor idea de hacia dónde se dirige su vida. Su niñez transcurrió en los salvajes paisajes de Alaska. La vida en la ciudad la enfrentará a nuevas formas de entender el mundo y las relaciones.

Glaciares es una de esas pequeñas y delicadas joyas que muy raramente caen de manera inesperada en nuestras manos. Una primera novela de prosa transparente y cortante como el cristal, precisa y austera, de una fragilidad y una honestidad desarmantes, recorrida de principio a fin por bellísimas imágenes, por silenciosas corrientes emotivas que albergan en su interior reveladoras verdades, de esas que terminan por convertirse en hitos de nuestra accidentada educación sentimental.

Como las heroínas de Virginia Woolf, Isabel descubre que en el lapso de un solo día de verano cabe una vida entera: su desmedido amor por los libros, los recuerdos de una infancia que se desvanece y los pequeños y enormes abismos que se abren bajo los pies cuando nos vemos obligados a tomar decisiones.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Romance, Novella, Book Club, Audiobook

145 pages, Hardcover

First published January 17, 2012

Reviews

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quiet little book full of reflections with such pretty passages, it felt so comforting and perfectly narrated by Rebecca Lowman, a perfect accompaniment.

[Evie · Rating 5 out of 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 her
And ev'rywhere she goes
A 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."

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Years ago, when I was living in another apartment complex, somebody left a small box of books in the laundry room. Most were Harlequin Romance type things--not my cup of whiskey--but there was a yearbook from Fort McClellan, Alabama. It was from the mid-1950's, and it traced a group of young women through Army basic training. While my clothes washed, I paged through the official portraits, those serious, dress uniform studio shots you see when someone gets killed. I saw more candid photos as well, as these women took classes; practiced on the rifle range, and beat the crap out of one another with pugil sticks, or in hand-to-hand combat. This book showed facts and photographs. My laundry done, I took the book back to my apartment, and read through it for an hour or two. It was a black and white document of Eisenhower-era basic training. As I looked at their faces, staring at them, trying to get a read on each of these young women, I was able to follow some from picture to picture--I could pick out those who were genuinely happy, as those who would rather go back to Racine and kick her recruiter square in the nuts.

Most of all, of course, I was trying to figure out which of my older female neighbors had served in the U.S. Army.

Isabel in "Glaciers" has the same kind of mind. As a young girl, she visits thrift stores and antique shops, looking for postcards of European cities. Between Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, Isabel hungers to visit great cities abroad--especially Amsterdam. She doesn't get to travel, so she collects vintage postcards, and travels vicariously through them--even better, when she stumbles upon a used postcard. For hours, she pored over a treasured postcard from Amsterdam, wondering why M would go to Amsterdam without his beloved L (M has to be a man, she observes, because of the handwriting).

Isabel's teacups are mismatched, one each of many different styles and qualities. This is on purpose. She saw these individual cups and saucers in thrift shops, and wondered what happened to her cups' proteges. After all, no bride would be happy receiving one cup and one saucer.

"Glaciers" shimmers, with rich attention to background, as well as a wonderfully keen eye for humans and our customs--almost a detached, anthropological take at times, like Isabel's spot-on description of so many of us today: the kind of loose-minded travelers who pointed and photographed without really seeing.

(Smith, Alexis (2012-01-10). Glaciers (A Tin House New Voice) (p. 16).)

That always fascinates me: I see people in parks, at fireworks displays, at concerts or their kids' ballgames, and they either have their eye glued to a video camera, or an infernal smartphone, the result being that they completely miss experiencing the event they wanted to preserve.

Seriously, Is there anything ironically less impressive than a home video of fireworks? In person--where the explosions, colors, and sparkles fill the sky, and the booms and hisses and whistles make you jump a little despite yourself--fireworks are amazing. On tv or YouTube? I have more impressive screensavers.

Isabel sees.

"Glaciers" switches back and forth through various stages in Isabel's life, though the narrative is mainly from the present: Isabel has a great job--she's 32 years old, with her own apartment, plenty of old things she's bought, and with a crush on Spoke, a nerdy-cute Army vet who works in her office. We see how Isabel's fascination with old things began as a curiosity, then became--in lean times as her parents divorced--a necessity. Now, as an ostensible grown-up, when Isabel has a party to attend, and she wants the perfect dress to impress her crush, her first stop is a thrift store, not a fancy boutique.

When Spoke gets called back to active duty, Isabel is left to consider how the world changes for him, as well as for the ones he loves (or could grow to love):

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. (p.119)

Mellifluous prose there, and "Glaciers" writ large just shimmers.

"Glaciers" is not a long book--178 pages--and considering the richness of the prose, it never bogs down. So many books these days give us banal pencil sketches of their characters, that when Isabel notices the tiny, real things that differentiate us from one another, it's almost stunning to find a character so well drawn.

Alexis M. Smith writes wonderfully, weaving Isabel's story like a tapestry in which every string is crucial. Her command of descriptive language reminded me of Joyce Carol Oates or Thomas Wolfe, and I hope she has a long career, and a limitless supply of good ideas.

Although there is probably no less-meaningful distinction on Earth, "Glaciers" is on the short list for my favorite book of 2012. I can see myself reading it over and over, taking comfort in it as a sort of touchstone in this world, one where I know I'm not the only one who'd be fascinated by that Army Basic Training yearbook.

Most highly recommended.

[Jan Agaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is the epitome of the word, anomoeia, aka nostalgia for a time you've never known. the writing & the audiobook are gorgeous.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is barely more than a short story, but worth a read. An almost love story that takes place in one day.
My favorite line: (Isabel is a librarian who repairs books).

"Monotonous and thankless as her job can be sometimes, she cheers at the thought of her co-workers--a dozen of them crammed into their little offices in the basement--all cleverly disguised as harmless geeks, all capable of saving the world if called upon."

Now that's just pure poetry!

[Mahtab Safdari · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Glaciers" is a subtle and powerful exploration of the human experience, told through the lens of one woman's day.
Alexis Smith uses the concept of time as a central motif, juxtaposing Isabel's present experiences with memories of the past and imaginings of the future. The novel's structure, with its short vignettes, further emphasizes the fleeting nature of moments and the accumulation of experiences over time.
The story focuses on the seemingly small, everyday moments and objects that hold significant meaning for Isabel. These details, from vintage dresses to old postcards, become portals to the past and reveal the richness of her inner world.
"Glaciers" is rich in imagery, particularly visual imagery, that evokes a sense of place, emotion, and memory.
***
"It’s a strange product of infatuation, she thinks. To want to tell someone about mundane things. The awareness of another person suddenly sharpens your senses, so that the little things come into focus and the world seems more beautiful and complicated."
***
"Her story could be told in other people’s things. The postcards and the photographs. A garnet ring and a needlepoint of the homestead. The aprons hanging from her kitchen door. Her soft, faded, dog-eared copy of Little House in the Big Woods. A closet full of dresses sewn before she was born.
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. "

[Courtney · Rating 2 out of 5]

On a sentence level, Alexis Smith is a decent writer. Unfortunately, those sentences are strung together in a completely irritating, self-indulgent, and anger-inducing manner. The biggest problem, for me, is Smith's aversion to any sort of tension or ambiguity. She literally mentions something quasi-mysterious about Isabel (the protagonist) and explains the backstory of that quirk or attribute in the very next section or passage! I found myself wanting to yell, "It's okay to let the reader speculate! You don't need to spell everything out for us in an extremely patronizing way!" So, yeah, I felt completely useless while reading Glaciers. There's just no participatory space for the reader.

I also felt like this novel was literally crammed with sentiments and decorative moments that were meant to be oh-so-meaningful...and just aren't. They're shallow and trite.

[Amy Imogene Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5, rounded up

This novella grows on you slowly. At first, I thought to myself—this is one of those stories that is well-written prose but nothing overly special. Then I thought, okay, it’s about layers of memory and history and connection—more interesting, but a bit dull to read. But by the time it finished… I don’t know. I closed the book and retained that sense of longing, of ephemera-based melancholic nostalgia. There’s something here that lingers.

[Megan Rowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

174 pages of breathtaking wow. This is a book about discarded photos, maps, and postcards, and how the people in the photos and postcards remind us that old people were once young, and we will one day be old. Its beautiful clarity suggests that relationships have changed, but in important ways, they have stayed the same.


Everyone should read this book, I am ever so glad I did.

[Vishy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered ‘Glaciers’ by Alexis Smith through a friend's review of it. Something about the book and the description of the Tin House edition made me want to read the book. I finished reading it yesterday. Here is what I think.

‘Glaciers’ follows one day in the life of Isabel. Isabel lives in Portland, Oregon. She works in a library and repairs old books. She lives a quiet, contented life. She takes pleasure in the small, simple things – shopping for a nice secondhand dress which is atleast a few decades old, buying an old vintage postcard or photograph, wrapping her hands around a hot cup of tea and sipping her tea slowly, making gentle conversations with office friends, eating lunch alone at a quiet vegetarian restaurant. After a few pages we fall in love with Isabel. Isabel also likes one of her office co-workers, Spoke. He, of course, doesn’t know it, because he seems to be equally introverted like Isabel. They have quiet, brief conversations in the morning at the cafeteria in the office, before others arrive. On this particular day, the story moves between the present and the past – we learn about Isabel’s childhood in Alaska, about what happened to her parents and how she moved to Portland, about her aunt and uncle (the Astrologer and the Carpenter) who treat Isabel and her sister like grownups but who are also kind to them, about the glaciers melting, about how Isabel’s fascination with old photos and postcards (‘ephemera’) started. The present day story continues with Isabel getting ready to go to work, her quiet conversation with Spoke, her accidental lunch with Spoke, her wanting to invite him to a party in the evening. How Isabel’s past and present entwine and whether she is able to declare her love to Spoke and what happens to them, form the rest of the story.

‘Glaciers’ is a book to be read slowly. After the first few pages I totally fell in love with Isabel. Alexis Smith uses simple prose to paint soft, gentle, beautiful scenes in very page. I was angry and annoyed for some reason while reading the book and the book soothed and calmed me and made my heart glow with pleasure. It was really therapeutic. There were beautiful scenes painted in every page. Like this :

She cups her tea in both hands, fingers wrapping around the cup and meeting on the other side.

And this :

The summer light was fading and there was a lightness in the air, so that voices seemed to float in the window several seconds after they were spoken.

And this :

The brevity of the postcard – the intense focus on the moment in the park – it was as intimate as a young man could be. Like reaching out and brushing a strand of hair from her eyes.

And this :

Isabel found herself staring into her box at her belongings, noticing how different they looked, like they had suddenly lost the context of her life.

And this :

Everything they’ve never said flows into the narrow space between them.

And this :

She stirs, puts the hot spoon into her mouth, the metal and sweetness burning her tongue.

And this :

The crows woke her, in the trees outside; they slipped into that place between dreaming and waking.

And this, one of my favourite conversations in the book :

There are treasures everywhere, her father told her.
What kind of treasures? she asked.
All kinds. Like this, he said, grinning, holding up a record…
Oh, Isabel said, unsure if this was actually proof.
Belly, he said, putting the record down on his stack and squatting next to her, it’s a treasure if you love it. It doesn’t matter how much it costs, or whether anyone else wants it. If you love it, you will treasure it, does that make sense?

The book is worth reading for these beautiful images and scenes alone. It also tells the story of a gentle soul.

There are interesting literary references in the book – I could spot James Baldwin, Ford Maddox Ford, Elizabeth Hardwick, Samuel Delaney, Virginia Woolf. I am sure that if I looked more closely, there will be more. I don’t know whether this is true, but the book also seems to pay homage to James Joyce with the absence of punctuation marks and the circular nature of the ending. Clearly Alexis Smith is well read and has a sophisticated, fine literary mind.

As the story is set in Portland, one of my favourite cities where one of my favourite friends is from, I thought there will be something about the city in the book. Maybe a mention of Laurelhurst pub or the Rose garden or the Portland State University. Unfortunately, there was not much of the city in the book. I remember seeing a mention of the Columbia river gorge though.

The Tin House edition of the book that I read is beautifully produced. My favourite parts of the cover were the back cover and the inside flap at the back. When we look at the back cover, it looks like a torn paper is on top of the actual cover. It also looks like the book has got wet at some point – maybe because someone carried it out while it was raining – and those water stains are there on the back cover. I know these stains by experience because some of my books which got wet have stains like this. It took me a while to realize that these stains were not real but they were the magic of the artist. Also, when I looked at the inside back flap, the torn part looked very real and I had to pinch myself and check the picture again to assure myself that it was the artist’s magic. Simple artwork, but very beautiful.

‘Glaciers’ is a wonderful debut novel. I loved it. It is a book that I will keep dipping back into again and again to savour the beautiful, gentle images. I can’t wait to find out what Alexis Smith comes up with next.

Have you read Alexis Smith’s ‘Glaciers’? What do you think about it?

[Chessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looooved this small book. Packs a punch despite its brevity. A fun book to hold in your hands, I recommend the print version over an ebook for this one.

Enchanting. Lovely. Heart-sigh.

[Gohnar23 · Rating 4 out of 5]

#️⃣4️⃣2️⃣9️⃣ Read & Reviewed in 2025 💔🩸
Date : 🚀 Tuesday, September 2, 2025 🚫🔻❌
Word Count📃: 22k Words 🧨🔪🎈

⋆⭒𓆟⋆｡˚𖦹𓆜✩⋆ >-;;⁠;⁠;€ᐷ °‧ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 ·｡

( ˶°ㅁ°) !! My 3rd read in "READING AS MANY BOOKS AS I CANNN 😢 cuz smth....happened.....irl.........😥" September ⚡

4️⃣🌟, such a quick little short story of someone who genuinely likes reading and mentions other literature.
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This is a simple book that has a simple premise of Isabel caring about relationships and second hand books and the different events that happened in her life. It is an nostalgic feeling when reading this as it really takes you back to the times where life is simple and you just care about things you care about & do the things you love. There are many genuine authentic thoughts put into this end daily living reflections that you can also apply in your life just like her! Maybe I'd want to have a similar lifestyle to her because i pretty much like how she is living her life in this book. This is perfect as a Chick Lit book as this is just pure vibes all throughout and nothing bad or devastating ever happens to drive the plot, just a fun and positive time from start to finish.

She is also a librarian so that's a plus. This is one of those books where you just read it in a cafe and have a chilly fun time overall, loved the pacing and the (quite short) length of this novel.

[Brendan Monroe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glaciers is a story about longing — for places we've never been, for people we've never known.

It's a slim palimpsest of a thing, in which the words that are written on the page aren't the words you remember afterwards at all because in the meantime you've written over them your own words, your own story.

This beautiful little novella may only be 110 pages, but it took me a couple of weeks to get through as I could barely make it more than a handful of pages at a time before it carried me away into my own thoughts. So it was that you'd find me, 20 minutes and two pages later, lost in my own thoughts, my gaze captured between the paragraphs.

This is one of those wonderful little books where it's hard to pinpoint exactly where it stops and you begin. At several points, the story of our protagonist, Isabel, seemed to overlap with my own. The books and references she tossed about felt incredibly familiar ... had I become her or had she become me?

It's the final chapter, on other people's stories, that broke that wall of separation for good. It illuminates the very nature of storytelling and the fact that we all have so many stories to tell, so many incredible stories, and yet most of us don't even know it.

Isabel's a librarian, and as a librarian she's surrounded by the stories of others all day. Initially Isabel's life consists of simple fragments, jagged pieces of unassembled dreams that she can't quite form into a cohesive whole.

Like so many of us, she's drifting through space and time struggling to reconcile her days with her desires, living through other people's stories, and plying that thin space between her own life and the lives of others.

As the page number increases, so does Isabel's sense of her own story until, at last, the book comes to an end, and her story begins. And, with it, the reader's sense of their own.

[Jeannine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a very dreamy quality about it and as it covers one day (with flashbacked memories interwoven) of Isabel's life, it's pace is like a stroll rather than a race. And it's quiet.

As someone who is reading a lot on kindle of late, I actually bought this in book-form because of its satisfying size (smaller than most novels). The print is elegant, the paper is high quality and deckle-edged, and I adore how the margins on each page are pretty wide. It's just a visually and texturally satisfying little book to hold.

The story is ok (read any of the synopsi available). The writing is very good, lots of lovely imagery and a few illuminating insights. I tend to bristle at any representation of the military in any media, being the wife of a retired Marine I'm a little sensitive to innacurate portrayals (hint: almost nobody gets it right), but I found this author's take to at least be fair.

If you're looking for something fast-paced and plot-driven, this isn't the book for you. If you're looking to read something a little quirky and dreamy, character driven, and a little poetic, then maybe it is.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a small, simple story, barely a story at all, and yet it leaves behind such an impression. Beautifully and quietly.

Isabel was in her early twenties. She had grown up in Alaska, but life had brought her to Portland, Oregon. She lived alone and she worked in a room in the library basement, repairing old and damaged books.

When she wasn’t working, she sought out dresses in vintage clothing stores, and vintage postcards in junk shops. She wondered about the places they showed, the people who had written them, the lost stories behind them. And she dreamed of so many possibilities that they suggested life might offer.

She found the name of a childhood friend inside one of the library books sent to her to be restored.

“It was a copy of Elizabeth Hardwick’s ‘Sleepless Nights’. As she pulled the book from her cart, it bloomed open in her two hands. With an exhausted, papery sigh the pages fell out one by one and drifted to the floor. Isabel bent to pick up the pages, and there was Leo’s name …”

He had been lost to her, so many things had been lost, when her parents separated and left Alaska for new lives.

At the library, Isabel worked alongside Spoke, a veteran of the war in Iraq (so named because a bomb exploded when he was repairing a bicycle and a spoke from the wheel pierced his right lung), who was as solitary and introspective as she was. They had slowly become friends, but Isabel was sure that they were kindred spirits, that they could be something more to each other.

Neighbours invite Isabel to a party. She looks for the perfect dress, and she finds it; it really is perfect. and maybe, quite imperceptibly, that created the spark that changed things.

The narrative moves slowly, weaving together memories of the past; dreams of what might have been and what might be; and scenes from the life that Isabel is living. It is written quite beautifully, in spare, delicate prose, and in a lovely style that suits its subjects and its themes perfectly.

It speaks profoundly of nostalgia for childhood days and times when life was simpler; of imagining other lives and other possibilities; and of finding a place in the word; of how all those things can have such a pull on a heart.

I can’t say that Glaciers is a book for everyone, but it is a book for everyone who understands the appeal of vintage clothes, old postcards, classic books, and who understands how lovely it is to dream.

It’s a very small book, but sometimes a small book can touch you in a way that a big book can’t.

This little book, and its heroine, touched me, and when I look at this book now it seems entirely fitting that I feel a gentle wave of nostalgia …

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 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.

[Traci · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's really not much I can say about the plot of this book, as it's pretty much exactly what the dust jacket states: a day in the life of Isabel. So I'll talk more about my overall impressions of this very slim work, if that's OK with you, dear reader.

The author has a nice way with words. For example, when describing Isabel's parents' impending divorce, the author writes: "When her parents were together, they had little to say to each other. The fissures in their family grew until the most important parts broke free and began to float away." When Isabel ruminates about her childhood dream of becoming a writer, the author tells us that her grandmother talked her out of it, saying "there was no market for being in love with words." It comes as no coincidence that our main character ends up working in preservation at a library, as it gives her a chance to save those very words that others write.

There are few characters here, and none of them are what I would call overly developed. There's Spoke, the war vet that Isabel crushes on at work (his real name is Thomas, and trust me when I tell you that even I had forgotten reading it the first and only time it appears - I had to skim back over the book to find it). His nickname does involve a bicycle, albeit in a round-about way, although it was a book that almost saved his life.

Isabel's older sister, Agnes, is mentioned but only in the flashbacks. Agnes is, of course, pretty and popular. Isabel describes herself as overweight, bordering on fat, but as a reader, I never really got that impression of her. Of course, many women think of themselves as "fat" when they're really just at a healthy weight, so perhaps that's the case here. My biggest reason for doubting Isabel's adult plumpness is that she shops in vintage shops, and as someone who has tried to do the same, I can't imagine her being able to buy anything is she was really that heavy. I'm not grossly obese or anything, but I have never been able to find a dress to fit me as such a shop. I see her as possibly curvy, but not fat.

This is a nice book with good writing, but ultimately it's not satisfying. Much like the postcard Isabel finds in first chapter of the book, the one of Amsterdam that has the message from M- to L- written on it, there's just enough to let the reader come up with some scenarios of his or her own. But not enough to know the whole story. Also, it's awfully short for a novel, especially as it's a smallish trade paperback with lots of white space on each page. If I had done a word count on it, I'm guessing it would come closer to being a novella. I will keep my eyes out for Smith's next work, though, as I think she shows real promise.

[Chris Blocker · Rating 4 out of 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.

[Tina B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used to keep a shoe box under my bed, filled with mementos from special people and occasions. A note. A trinket. A strip of photos from an 80’s photo-booth. A movie ticket stub. When my mother was stricken with terminal cancer a few years later, I collected letters and tributes from her friends and pressed them inside a photo album. It wasn’t the items I was collecting, but the stories they contained.

Years later, I discovered thrift stores. I fell in love with vintage odds and ends. A hand-painted vase. Odd, mismatched teacups and saucers. Well-worn t-shirts from concerts and vacation locations. Used books with notes from one lover to another scribbled inside the front cover.

I gave them all stories. Their fictional stories entwined with my own. Maybe it was the writer in me. The introvert who found it too exhausting to socialize, imagining others’ lives instead. Or maybe it was, as Alexis M. Smith writes in Glaciers” my attempt to hold onto the past, ‘a kind of mourning for the things that do not last.’ Everything might be fleeting, but stories survive.

Perhaps all of this is why I was so enchanted by “Glaciers”. “Glaciers” is the story of an introvert named Isabel told over the course of a single day. She works in a library where she repairs damaged books. The reader learns about her through flashbacks of her childhood, her love of vintage dresses and relics, as well as her dreams of visiting cities she hasn’t yet been. She collects photographs and postcards, imagining the stories of the people she sees.

All the while, she harbors a crush on her coworker Spoke, an Iraq war veteran. During their shared presence in the break room, she imagines the infatuation is mutual. And it is. But their feelings for each other are shown when it’s too late. Spoke is called back to war, leaving only his story to weave with hers.

But is it her actual story — or her desire to hold onto something that couldn’t last?

"Spoke belongs to a place that does not actually exist, a city just like this one, except that in the other city they have been lovers for weeks, have had their first fight, and have eaten food from each other’s plates.”

“Glaciers” is a story about stories. The stories underline the novel’s theme of loss. The loss of romance, of family members, of her childhood home, and in the fading stories of the vintage photographs and dresses. However, “Glaciers” isn’t heavy or sad. It’s lyrical and light. There isn’t a definable plot, but it’s still rich with emotion and depth. It’s beautifully written. It’s enchanting. Engaging.

“Glaciers” is for the introvert. It’s for the person sad from loss who needs to feel the beauty of the stories left behind. It’s a powerful little book that washes over you as gently as a warm spring breeze. You’ll finish it refreshed.

We hold onto stories to hold onto the past, to mourn those things that do not last. It’s why I’ll hold onto this book and tell its story for years to come.

[kimberly_rose · Rating 1 out of 5]

I liked the idea of this story more than the story itself. I liked its theme of valuing stories, honouring the power they hold.

Ironically(?), there is a thick, frosted sheet of glass over all the characters in this book and their individual stories. The effect, I think, was partly created by the dialogue choice: it's entirely made up of a distancing stream-of-consciousness summary style. The other narrative technique of short descriptions of Isobel's past alternating with short descriptions of her present did nothing to deepen the relationship of reader to character. It was like a big ol' boring journal of telling. The (too many) people that come in and out of Isobel's life are only offered superficially. I don't feel as if I truly got to know a single one of them, to feel for them, to care for them. They were all displayed behind that impenetrable glass wall, where I could see what they were doing but not clear enough to see what they were feeling. I especially felt distanced from Spoke, the male "love" interest. Why did he even like Isobel romantically? Why did she like him? Their encounters, although lovely and promising of a powerful connection, were unbelievably brief for any serious commitment. Also, and perhaps the biggest problem: there is no narrative tension. It's just so... mellow. So mellow, I did not care or commit.

The biggest reaction I had was mild annoyance from two personal triggers. (So, these are not narrative criticisms.) Spoke, a kind, gentle soul, perpetuates war and killing by returning for another tour with the army. (I don't care which country's army: they're all the same, the only difference being where the pitiable soldiers happened to be born.) His reasons didn't fly for me. The whole thing, a huge plot point, seemed incongruous with the rest of what I grasped as his character. And, while I understand, I don't relate to Isobel's extreme prioritization of material "stuff" as a means to capture stories.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Nora Eugénie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Acompañamos a Isabel durante 24 horas, desde que se despierta y va al trabajo hasta que termina la jornada, se despide y acude a una fiesta. Pero en lo que parece una propuesta simple y plana, nos encontramos con 145 páginas en los que están metidos los sueños, los pesares, los deseos, las nostalgias, la esperanza y el desasosiego de los veintiocho años de la protagonista. Es maravilloso como algo pequeño y cotidiano puede esconder algo grande, algo grande como una historia y unos sentimientos complejos y redondos, cómo puede tocarte los cinco sentidos, tan solo evocando imágenes, tactos y olores, pinceladas de una cotidianidad ajena. Este libro es como una peliculita, en la que acompañas sigilosamente a la protagonista en su día y cuando acaba solo quieres atravesar la pantalla y poder darle un abrazo.

[Aura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this quick little read about a twenty something woman librarian and an office flirtation. My favorite part of this story is when Isabel goes to the party and the guest play the story game. Do people do these kind of things anymore? It made me think of a time before tweeter and cellphones when we actually talked to each other about ourselves while looking at each other in the face. If you are interested in Alaska, traveling, love, vintage clothing, photographs and books, you will love this superbly written short novel.

[David Abrams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes you find the book, and sometimes the book finds you. This was the case for me when, earlier this year, I walked into the Barnes and Noble in Bozeman, Montana "just to get a latte" (i.e., I wasn't on a typical book-buying mission). I was walking toward the cafe when it happened: Glaciers found me. It was like one of those "meet cute" scenes in movies when the pretty brunette dogwalker and the distracted guy with the briefcase, walking in opposite directions, round a corner at the same time and he ends up tangled in leashes and tails and she knocks the briefcase out of his hand, spilling papers all over the sidewalk. That's how it was for me with Alexis M. Smith's slim, pretty novel. A chance encounter. A walking past, then a double-take and a doubling-back. A glance at the cover. A skim of the plot summary, blurbs and first sentence ("Isabel often thinks of Amsterdam, though she has never been there, and probably will never go."). An eye-poke of interest. An impulse buy.

It was the best thing I bought all year (and that includes the 2011 GMC Acadia my wife and I just purchased).

The novel chronicles one day in the life of Isabel, a twenty-eight-year-old library worker, as she repairs damaged books, prepares for a party, and pines for a co-worker, an Iraq War veteran named "Spoke." As a single woman living in Portland, Oregon, Isabel haunts thrift stores and collects second-hand items like postcards, teacups, aprons, dresses--the cast-off remnants which were once new, happy purchases by someone decades earlier. "She feels a need to care for them that goes beyond an enduring aesthetic appreciation," Smith writes. "She loves them like adopted children."

It's fitting that Isabel collects scraps of the past because she is a character who lives primarily in memory. The book slips seamlessly between the present and Isabel's childhood growing up in Alaska and Portland with her mother, father and sister Agnes. Written in sentences as simple and delicate and beautiful as a single strand of a spider's silk, Glaciers reads like a literal dream. We move through the pages quickly, as if floating just above the words, and it's over before we want it to be. I could have stayed in Isabel's world for a long, long time.

Glaciers is easily one of the best books I've read this year. It's beautifully packaged by Tin House Books--French flaps, deckle-edge pages, generous white space around the text--and even more gorgeous, chapter by chapter, sentence after sentence, word to word.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

The plot and pacing are well-reviewed here by others, so I will focus on other aspects. My 18 & 20-year old daughters and I chose it as our first mother-daughter book club selection, and it was the perfect choice. We selected it because 1) it's only 174 pages, and we wanted our first book to be one we could all finish easily in 1-2 sittings, 2) it is in paperback so buying 3 copies wasn't too costly, 3) it's about a young woman who frequents thrift stores looking for treasures, like my girls and I love to do, 4) the main character works in the library, like I do. It contained references we could all relate to (the jelly shoes of the 90's), and some I could enlighten them about (what the Third Eye is, about the iconic Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass album cover of the woman covered in shaving cream). We are planning a book-related activity when we are all finished, and I'm sure it will include a trip to a thrift store to thumb though the $.25 albums.

[Adrienne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think "glaciers" must refer to the speed at which the protagonist's thoughts travel. This town is full of bookish, shy, slightly overweight young women who love books and vintage dresses and are in love with unavailable vegetarian bearded bike-riding men who roll up one pant leg to reveal a striped sock. This is your chance to get inside the mind of one of them for a day and Isabel does not do one single interesting or unexpected thing or anything that shows any initiative ever. There are one or two good moments but it's hard to find them because I had the urge to skip over most of it so quickly.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a new author to pay attention to. Glaciers is brief (my only complaint is I wanted more) but I realized I was feeling every emotion along with Isabel, whose story jumps around between present day and her childhood in Alaska and beyond. The reason I brought it home from the library at all was that the main character worked in libraries, but it exceeded my expectations, even just in the character alone. You will want to experience it for yourself. I think I'll read it again before I return it.

[Julie Fenske · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story about someone who is filled with longing, personal histories and the webs they weave, the beauty of a unexplainable feeling, how a single day lived can encapsulate a whole life. The sentences are gorgeous and I don’t know of any other books where the description of a child hugging a glacier could make me cry like that. Hopeful and haunting and meditative. For people who never forget anything and are a little too attached to their trinkets.
For people who pass glowing windows at night and are forever peering into them, wondering about the lives of those inside.

[Anne · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is so full of hipster clichés I can't handle it. (Vintage! Librarians! Portland! Hip parties! Sadness!) Reads like a hipster high school creative writing student's dream.

[Don · Rating 2 out of 5]

A wafty MFA novel that, although beautifully written, says nothing substantial about life or the human situation.