The Incident Report

By Martha Baillie and George Albert Brown

: In a Toronto library, home to the mad and the marginalized, notes appear, written by someone who believes he is Rigoletto, the hunchbacked jester from Verdi’s opera. Convinced that the young... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1897141254
• ISBN13: 9781897141250
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Pedlar Press
• Length: 195 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Original, Lovely, Mysterious

"Many incidents occur in public libraries, and when one does the librarian in charge is required to fill out the necessary forms..." In a Toronto public library, 35-year-old clerk Miriam Gordon extends this documentary practice beyond events that occur in the course of her work to events in her life generally. Through a series of 144 spare vignettes -- some a mere fragment, some a couple of pages, many almost poetic -- she documents her interactions with patrons and co-workers, her lunch hours on a bench in a nearby park, a new romance. Some serve as springboards to poignant memories from her childhood; some coalesce to develop a mysterious and compelling thread referencing Rigoletto and Satie. Together, the patrons -- eclectic, demented, dangerous -- highlight how open and exposed a public library is. The ending is resonant yet ambiguous, and when I returned to reread earlier passages even previous clarity took on ambiguity! Recommended.