GLACIERS by Alexis M. Smith

Isabel works in the basement of her local library, repairing damaged books and daydreaming about the people in postcards and photographs she has picked up in thrift shops around town. Hers is a life of found objects, of ordinary things made extraordinary by her imagination. It is also one of longing. For her coworker, Spoke. For a trip to Amsterdam. For a story of her own.

Glaciers is, as the title suggests, an unabashedly quiet and gentle book. Granted, that’s often reviewer code for boring, but in this case I could not have been more enchanted. In these hundred pages there is an entire life, from Isabel’s childhood on an Alaskan glacier, to the collapse of her parents’ marriage, to her self-imposed exile from anything remotely modern. There is also a non-preachy undertone of environmental despair. It’s a lot for a short book that’s set over the course of a single day.

Written with immense tenderness and grace, Glaciers is a book you’ll want on your shelf. I know this sounds like another codeword, but the whole thing is genuinely lovely, and I’ll definitely be picking it up again whenever life gets too loud.

Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith
Tin House, 2023 (First Pub 2012)
100 pages