The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
My rating: 4/5 cats
A town isn’t a town without a bookstore.
while it’s true that this is the literary equivalent of a stone skipped over a pond, it’s a pretty damn charming stone. reading about other booknerds, even when they are better described as bookcranks, is delightful to me. A Novel Bookstore, Salamander, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, etc are among my favorite books. are they the best books ever written? nah. but they have characters whose sensibilities are so close to my own, it’s hard not to feel a little heartswell when you encounter them. because if you’re on goodreads at all, you know that books matter. whether you read the kinds of vampire books that fikry laments or the more serious tomes he applauds (although considering he esteems The Book Thief, hasn’t finished proust’s ISOLT, and dismisses Infinite Jest, i’m taking his purported book-snobbery with a grain of salt), you know the power of a good story, even when it’s just a sweet little piece of light escapism.
this is a love letter to booklovers about the power of the written word to bring people together whether the relationships be romantic, parental, or book-clubby.
several of these relationships involve the titular a.j. fikry; a bookstore owner and widower living on a small island somewhere new england-y who finds himself entrusted with the care of a two-year-old named maya after she is abandoned in his bookstore. he’s already old-man curmudgeonly although still in his thirties, but finds the raising of maya and instilling in her his own love of books to be one of those rewarding experiences that enriches one’s life and is all sorts of inspirational. although he expresses it differently.
Fucking love, he thinks. What a bother. It’s completely gotten in the way of his plan to drink himself to death, to drive his business to ruin. The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything.
and give a shit he does, as his love for maya allows him to nurture other feelings including reluctantly acknowledged romantic ones for a vibrant book-loving woman with her own relationship baggage. in a comment that sounds like something ripped right out of Madame Bovary,
Her mother likes to say that novels have ruined Amelia for real men.
thankfully for fikry, this is not true, because he is indeed a real, flawed man.
but he’s also the kind of man whose first-date chatter involves “In what restaurant based on a novel would you have preferred to dine*?”
so he’s got some good points.
so it’s a romance and a sort-of cozy mystery (although the theft of his copy of Tamerlane is not important to the story – until it is), and one of those cheeky feel-good smalltown books in which suicides both occur and are contemplated and people die and there are miscarriages and infidelity, but it’s all glossed over in the same way as those other pesky realities like how an abandoned-child scenario would really be handled. because, no.
so despite the supremely precocious maya and the novel’s relentlessly cheerful tone, both of which i would ordinarily find irritating, i enjoyed the bookyness of it more than i was irritated by its greeting card outlook. all the discussions about the perils of e-books and chain bookstores (the only thing worse than a world with big chain bookstores was a world with NO big chain bookstores), the methods of publishing reps, the assessment that blurbs are the blood diamonds of publishing, “nerd” as a term of endearment, all the meta stuff at the beginning “if this were a book….” – it’s all stuff from “my” world, so it’s easy to love.
it’s a very quick read about bookfolk that may not be the most cerebral thing on the shelves, but it’s hard not to get caught up in its genuine enthusiasm and start nodding along nerdily at certain moments.
it’s summer- enjoy yourself.
* my answer – James and the Giant Peach. with giant animatronic bugs, slightly scarier than the ones on the film, and a menu including
baked peaches with ricotta and honey
chicken with peach chutney
peach cobbler
peach crisp
peach and pancetta pizza
peach soup
peanut butter and bacon burger with peach chutney
salmon and peaches
now, if you will excuse me.
all those peaches have made me feel daring.
