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Mobile Library

Synopsis

Twelve-year-old Bobby Nusku is an archivist of his mother. He catalogues traces of her life and waits for her to return home.

Bobby thinks that he's been left to face the world alone until he meets lonely single mother Val and her daughter Rosa. They spend a magical summer together, discovering the books in the mobile library where Val works as a cleaner. But as the summer draws to a close, Bobby finds himself in trouble and Val is in danger of losing her job. There's only one thing to do -- and so they take to the road in the mobile library . . .

Quirky, dark, magical and full of heart, Mobile Library by David Whitehouse is both a tragicomic road trip and a celebration of the adventures that books can take us on. It's a love-letter to unlikely families and the stories that shaped us.

Details

14 January 2016
288 pages
9781447274711
Imprint: Picador

Reviews

Original and quirky, Mobile Library is a startling story that gripped me until the very last page. A wonderful novelJuliet West, author of BEFORE THE FALL
Mobile Library is an excellent novel about the power of words and how stories can help us transcend loss, loneliness and being an outsider. Whitehouse's ability to mix laughs with pathos makes for a warm-hearted book about family and a love letter to the importance of librariesNikesh Shukla, author of COCONUT UNLIMITED
I loved this novel. The story of Bobby Nusku and all of the people drawn into his journey over the course of English woodland and a crumbling aristocratic pile in Scotland is so compelling and tenderly drawn. Mobile Library is mobile loveliness, and you'll want to take it with you wherever you goNaomi Wood, author of MRS HEMINGWAY
Brilliant. Every page is filled with beautifully crafted sentences in a story replete with pathos and humourHannah Beckerman, author of THE DEAD WIFE'S HANDBOOK, Huffington Post