Mobile Library: A Novel - Hardcover

"A gorgeous, heartrending book, a book full of sentences so apt and well wrought, I sometimes had to read them twice."--Henry Alford, San Francisco Chronicle

"A great, tender-hearted story about stories. It's a book about what books can give us, and how they can add to our adventure - or even take us on one. A lovely read."--Matt Haig, author of The Humans

Praise for Mobile Library

"A great read and a touching and funny exploration of the true meaning of family."--S. J. Watson, author of Before I Go To Sleep

Praise for the Betty-Trask Prize-winning novel Bed

"Outlandishly clever description... Ingenious one-liners... There's no question that [David Whitehouse] is a writer to watch."--Janet Maslin, New York Times

"Gorgeous writing... A deceptively effortless, haunting first novel."--Boston Globe

"An agreeably old-fashioned story with likable characters and just enough suspense to keep the pages turning. And who can resist a novel about a mobile library?"--Booklist

"Powerful, eccentric . . . Whitehouse's writing is energetic and pacey, spiked with startling moments of tenderness and superbly controlled. Don't wait for the inevitable film."--The Times (London)

"Book lovers will be charmed by Mobile Library . . . It's a funny coming-of-age tale."--Good Housekeeping

"A modern day fairytale . . . a plot that bounds along, dramatic event after dramatic event . . . hints of magic . . . It's also fun . . . The message becomes clear: stories can save us, unite us, show us other ways of being, offer solace . . . as messages go, it's a sound one, an example of the open-hearted warmth at the core of this book."

--Financial Times

"An action packed tale of expanding horizons . . . engagingly offbeat powers of observation . . . the van becomes as much of a vehicle of fantasy as the Little Prince's biplane or James's giant peach - both a sanctuary from the outside world and a store of limitless possibilities . . . quietly profound . . . genuinely compelling."

--The Guardian

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).