Book Review: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

“It’s a good book?” Daniel asks me, as the dozenth chuckle emerges from my lips. He’s stopped asking me what’s so funny, as the humor is lost without context.

Yes, it’s a good book. It’s a reader’s book. Full of references to other stories, calls to tropes, twists on standard tales. It’s a reflective book without being self-conscious.

I laughed. By the end, I cried.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is about a bookseller, a widower with defined literary tastes who rather wants to run his bookstore to the ground while killing himself with drink. Now that Nic is dead, what has he to live for?

But a valuable book goes missing while he’s passed out drunk one night – and now his “insurance” is gone. It takes a stolen book, an unlikely friendship, and an abandoned child – but slowly, A.J. Fikry’s life starts to take on meaning again.

Each chapter opens with a book review of sorts: a blurb A.J. wrote about a book or a short story, hinting at what made that story important to him and worth reading to others. While I’d read only a few of the highlighted stories, Fikry’s descriptions were rich – and the connection between the stories he read and the stories he lived most interesting.

“It is so simple.
Maya…I have figured it all out–
The words you can’t find, you borrow.

We read to know we’re not alone.
We read because we are alone.
We read and we are not alone.
We are not alone.

My life is in these books–
Read these and know my heart.

We are not quite novels–
We are not quite short stories–
In the end, we are collected works.

This novel is sure to resonate with other readers as it resonated with me. I recommend it.

My recommendation is not without caveats, however. My readers will want to be aware that this book contains a few expletives and several instances of non-explicit sexual immorality.

Rating: 5 stars
Category: Literary fiction
Synopsis: Widowed bookseller A.J. Fikry is ready to give up on life when a stolen book, an unlikely friendship, and an abandoned child change his course completely.
Recommendation: A book lovers book – if your life has been changed by the stories you’ve read (and vice versa), you’re likely to enjoy this book.