5/5 stars

What's it about? Isabel goes to work at the public library in Portland, nurses an impossible crush, and attends a party. Those are the happenings in this trim, satisfying novel that captures perfectly an ambivalent twentysomething circa 2010.

How’d I find it? The staff picks at Powell’s rarely steer me wrong.

Who will enjoy this book? The library link and worry about climate change in Glaciers make this reader suspect that Jenny Offill was heavily inspired by Smith’s work in writing Weather. Either way, the two books pair nicely. For another read that takes place over one day, try A Simple Man by Christopher Isherwood.

What stood out? Smith nails time to the wall, writing into a moment when rising sea levels and the war in Iraq joined the search for intimacy as prime concerns for young adults. Glaciers presents a tiny time capsule, made all the more potent by Isabel’s nostalgia and need to preserve the past as well as the possible. The novel ends with a circle of partygoers swapping stories; it’s an elegant departure from the focus on the individual and sticks its landing.

Which line made me feel something? This bit of banter between Isabel and her friend Leon: “Who darns socks? Girls nobody tells stories about.”