Mobile Library, David Whitehouse
Mobile Library, David Whitehouse
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Mobile Library

Author: David Whitehouse

Narrator: Tim Gerard Reynolds

Unabridged: 7 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/20/2015


Synopsis

From the award-winning novelist David Whitehouse, hailed by The New York Times as “a writer to watch,” a tragicomic adventure about a troubled adolescent boy who escapes his small town in a stolen library-on-wheels.

“An archivist of his mother,” Bobby Nusku spends his nights meticulously cataloging her hair, clothing, and other traces of the life she left behind. By day, Bobby and his best friend Sunny hatch a plan to transform Sunny, limb-by-limb, into a cyborg who could keep Bobby safe from schoolyard torment and from Bobby’s abusive father and his bleach-blonde girlfriend. When Sunny is injured in a freak accident, Bobby is forced to face the world alone.

Out in the neighborhood, Bobby encounters Rosa, a peculiar girl whose disability invites the scorn of bullies. When Bobby takes Rosa home, he meets her mother, Val, a lonely divorcee, whose job is cleaning a mobile library. Bobby and Val come to fill the emotional void in each other’s lives, but their bond also draws unwanted attention. After Val loses her job and Bobby is beaten by his father, they abscond in the sixteen-wheel bookmobile. On the road they are joined by Joe, a mysterious but kindhearted ex-soldier. This “puzzle of people” will travel across England, a picaresque adventure that comes to rival those in the classic books that fill their library-on-wheels.

At once tender, provocative and darkly funny, Mobile Library is a fable about the intrinsic human desire to be loved and understood—and about one boy’s realization that the kinds of adventures found in books can happen in real life. It is the ingenious second novel by a writer whose prose has been hailed as “outlandishly clever” (The New York Times) and “deceptively effortless” (The Boston Globe).

About David Whitehouse

David Whitehouse is the author of Mobile Library and Bed, winner of the 2012 Betty Trask Prize and published in eighteen countries. He has several TV and film projects in development with Film4, Warp, the BBC, and others. In the UK, he writes regularly for the Guardian and The Times and is currently the Editor-at-Large of ShortList magazine.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Leilah

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies ... The man who never reads lives only one.” – George R. R. Martin Hooray for books. Hooray for the families they integrate us into, the adventures they take us on, and the lessons that they teach us. Hooray for every laugh or cry that they elicit. Hoor......more

Goodreads review by Tania

This was her experience of motherhood, something you can be good at for a lifetime, but only need to be bad at for a second. A beautifully written story about loneliness and the need to belong to a loving family. Although very sweet there are many sad and dark moments. The mobile library offers an es......more

When I was a child I eagerly awaited the fortnightly visits from the bright green Mobile Library bus that parked just outside my door, so I couldn't resist this title. Mobile Library by David Whitehouse is the big hearted, quirky story of twelve year old, Bobby Nusku, abused by his drunken father an......more

Goodreads review by Jo

Mobile Library reminds us that stories never end—they keep on going. Mobile Library is the story of Bobby Nesku, a skinny boy who feels unloved and alone. His mother is no longer home after a terrible car accident. Bobby waits for her to come back by cataloging any scraps he can find of her. He spen......more