Excerpt from The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"It's a harvest scene."

She bobbed her head, as if to say he was partly right. In an explaining tone of voice, she said, "It's about the fall feeling."

"What's that?"

"Don't you know?"

"I'm not sure that I do."

"The fall feeling," said Jill, "is the knowledge of a long dusk coming on." She looked at him with an expression of significance. Her reading glasses had a sticker attached to the left lens that read: $3.99.

She resumed her puzzle work, rooting about for useful pieces, her numb thumbs held out at odd angles, her middle and pointer fingers stained yellow by nicotine use. Bob said goodbye and walked off in search of Maria, pausing before a bulletin board choked with notices and artworks and informational papers. One flyer among the many caught his eye: a call for volunteers at the center. Maria returned to find Bob writing down the phone number for the American Volunteer Association in his pocket spiral notepad.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I don't know. I guess I'm interested."

"Have you volunteered before?"

"No."

She pointed that Bob should follow her out of the center and onto the porch. Once the front door clacked shut behind them, she said, "If I could be frank with you, I would encourage you to think twice before volunteering. I say this for your sake as well as mine. Because the volunteer program has been nothing but a strain on the center. Actually, I've asked the AVA to take us off their rotation because every person they've sent us has been far more problematic than helpful. Each one of them arrives here simply beaming from their own good deed, but none of them lasts out the month because the reality of the situation here is thornier than they can comprehend. You will never, for example, be thanked; but you will be criticized, scrutinized, and verbally abused. The men and women here are sensitive to the state of their lives; a single hint of charity and they lash out, and I can't really say that I blame them."

"Well," said Bob.

"I don't mean it as a critique against you personally," Maria told him. "You seem like a very nice man." She paused, and made the face of someone reapproaching an issue from a fresh angle. "May I assume you're retired?"

"Yes."

"What position did you hold?"

"I was a librarian."

"For how long were you a librarian?"

"From the ages of twenty-two to sixty-seven."

Maria said, "Sometimes retirees volunteer for us in hopes we'll take their malaise away."

"I don't suffer from malaise," Bob said. "And I don't care to be thanked." The cloud cover had thinned and the sky was lit in pastel pinks, purples, and an orange. Bob was marking these colors when he had his idea. "I could read to them."

"Read to who?"

He pointed at the center.

"Read to them what?"

"Stories."

"What kind of stories?"

"Stories of entertainment."

Maria was nodding, then shaking her head. "Yes, but no," she said. "These aren't readers, for the most part, Bob."

"But to be read to is another thing," he told her. "Everyone likes to be told a story."

"Okay, but do they?" she asked.

They were stepping down the tall concrete stairwell set to the side of the zigzagging path. Maria restated her belief that the reading angle was a mistake; but Bob had won her over with his pluck, and she said she was willing to let him try it out. When they arrived at the sidewalk, she gave him her business card and said, "Just refer the AVA to my office number, and we'll get you placed here." Bob thanked her and shook her hand and walked off. Halfway up the block he turned back and saw that Maria was watching him. "What did you think of Jill?" she called out, and Bob made the half-and-half gesture. Now Maria smiled, and she turned and jogged up the steps, which surprised Bob; he wouldn't have thought of her as a jogger-up-the-steps.

Excerpted from The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt. Copyright © 2023 by Patrick deWitt. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.