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Loading... The Incident Report (2009)by Martha Baillie
  
No current Talk conversations about this book. 1   resoundingjoy | Jan 1, 2021 |   Miriam works in a branch of the Toronto Public Library. This book follows Miriam for a short time at her job, and in her personal life. The format is a bit different – each chapter is written as if it's an “incident report” in the library. Some of them are incidents that happen with the library patrons, but some chapters focus on Miriam's personal life and some on her life as a child. It was good, and the ending was a surprise to me. Very fast to read. (  ) LibraryCin | Apr 2, 2019 |  ) LaurelT | Dec 11, 2015 | The Incident Report is a list of reports filed by librarians about disturbing activities in the library. And that’s it. That’s the whole plot. What do you think? I’m a librarian, so I might be more interested than most people in stories centered around library problems, but I think it’s a cool enough idea that you will like it, too. (  )1 debnance | Mar 29, 2013 | Miriam's narrative voice was controlled, and careful, and hints as the way she tries to control her life. Gradually, the reports begin to include more of her sad past, and the more hopeful present. The writing was lyrical and poetic, and the fact that so much happened, spoken and unspoken, is surprising to me, after the fact. I am amazed, really, at how much story happened in such a short time, so many vivid characters described, and how much Miriam said by not saying it. I'm making this the first entry in the Bibliophilic challenge, though while not strictly about books, it is about libraries and librarians, which is about reading. As a bonus, it's epistolary, a favorite style of writing. It certainly isn't going to cause anyone to decide to be a librarian - it's made me think about all the people in society who use the library. (  )1 raidergirl3 | Nov 30, 2011 |
 The Incident Report is a maddening work. Inter-textual head nods run a dizzying gamut from Satie to Giuseppe Verdi, the Brothers Grimm to Thomas Bernhard, Marc Chagall to Mark Rothko, Ray Bradbury to A.A. Milne; even Jim Davis, “renowned cartoonist and author of Garfield the Cat,” makes a fleeting cameo. Through bludgeons of repetitive absurdia, orchestral assaults on Reason, fantastical escapes into subliminal pathology, and in the provocative spirit of gentle Janko – who so alluringly wonders: “Have you ever gotten lost, Miriam, my Darkest Miriam, so lost you couldn't find your way home?” – Baillie offers us the utter virtues of disorientation, of supremely getting lost. A beautiful derangement.  Miriam’s reports chronicle her professional interactions with harmless eccentrics, young families, students, and also an alarming number of patrons who are inebriated, abusive, and mentally unstable. The reader can’t help but be endeared to Miriam as her affectless description of the abuses and indignities she endures is paired with her acute sensitivity to the minutiae of daily existence. While The Incident Report is a work of fiction complete with a fictional narrator, a love story and a mystery, the novel is also grounded in reality. Running through the reports is a depiction of how Toronto libraries have become a refuge for the city's marginalized.
: 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 Verdis opera. Convinced that the young librarian, Miriam, is his daughter, he promises to protect her from grief. Little does he know how much loss she has already experienced; or does he? The Incident Report, both mystery and love story, daringly explores the fragility of our individual identities. Strikingly original in its structure, comprised of 140 highly distilled, lyric reports, the novel depicts the tensions between private and public storytelling, the subtle dynamics of a socially exposed workplace. The Incident Report is a novel of gestures, one that invites the reader to be astonished by the circumstances its characters confront. Reports on bizarre public behaviour intertwine with reports on the private life of the novels narrator. Shifting constantly between harmony and dissonance, elegant in its restraint and excitingly contemporary, The Incident Report takes the pulse of our fragmented urban existence with detachment and wit, while a quiet tragedy unfolds. Previous books, with dates and publishers: The Shape I Gave You Knopf 2006 Madame Balashovskayas Apartment - Turnstone Press 1999Translations of Madame Balashovskayas Apartment:An einem Regentag in Paris Ebersbach 2001 (Germany)Madame B. titka - Kossuth 2003 (Hungary) My Sister Esther Turnstone Press 1995 No library descriptions found. 
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813Literature English (North America) American fictionLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.84)
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This enjoyable mystery is an excellent addition to the collection of fiction set in libraries. Library workers will embrace her stories and probably tell ones of their own to accompany them. (