Mobile Library

November 17, 2014
After a thrashing by his abusive father and a schoolyard fight, young Bobby Nusku takes refuge with a neighborhood cleaning lady, Val, and her disabled daughter, Rosa, all the while pining for his mysteriously absent mother. Piling into a recently deactivated mobile library vehicle that Val maintains on weekends, Val and her charges run away. On their journey, they meet Joe, a gangly ex-soldier drifter, and decide to pose as a family as they evade the authorities in England and head towards a safe haven in Scotland. The group bonds while consuming classic literature, stealing supplies, and painting the vehicle to appear less conspicuous, yet Bobby cannot forget his past. He pores over artifacts of his mother that he's meticulously kept in jars and folders, waiting for the day of her return. Whitehouse's narrative provides moments of charm and whimsy, particularly as characters take on storybook personas (the Caveman, the Zookeeper, the Hunter), but the abrupt perspective shifts, often multiple times per chapter, are occasionally clumsy, and the narrative's voyage is intermittently striking. When stacked against the literary gems Bobby and his crew read throughout, from The Little Prince to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Whitehouse's novel feels ordinary.

Tim Gerard Reynolds narrates with a quietly unassuming English voice as he brings to life Whitehouse's poignant novel. Bobby Nusku is lonely and bullied--his mother is absent and his father is uninterested in him. He meets Rosa, a girl with learning disabilities, and her mother, Val. Reynolds's sensitive handling of Rosa's and Val's voices draws in the listener just as Bobby is drawn in to their family. As Val cleans the mobile library, she entertains the children with the stories within, and when reality begins to dangerously intrude, they take their sanctuary on the road. As the police search for the missing children and an ex-soldier joins the mobile library's crew, it is hard to see how this can end well. Could the answer lie on the library shelves? C.A.T. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine