Gabrielle Zevin. The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry. Chapel Hill NC: Algonquin, 2014. Print.
Gabrielle Zevin has written some young adult novels, and The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry looks like another. It has a little over 250 pages, lots of white on the page. However, this is meant for adults, though anyone who likes books could enjoy it.
The title character is a socially awkward bookstore owner. Many of the novel’s dialogues are about novels and short stories. Fikry is pretty opinionated. He is also fairly isolated in spite of his store’s motto:
No man is an island: Every book is a world.
Island Books is the only bookstore on a Martha’s Vineyeard type island off the coast of Cape Cod. Mr. Fikry is rude, but he is also truly lonely. He is still recovering from his young wife’s death when he finds himself in charge of a foundling. It is a contemporary setting, but the novel has strong echoes of Silas Marner or The Old Curiosity Shop with its charmer meets curmudgeon plot.
The Storied Life could be fun for anyone who likes to read. There are many allusions to books and conversations about books. Most, though not all, the works mentioned were published since 1920 in America, so they do reflect the point of view of someone with an American bookstore or who works for an American publisher.
The story is told from Fikry’s point of view, and books are his life. Zevin writes carefully, so the story comes across as charming without being too sentimental. Some of the foreshadowing is unsubtle, but there are a few surprises as the story progresses.
Mr. Fikry becomes enamored of a publisher’s representative (i.e. traveling saleswoman) named Amelia Loman. She does not appear related to the ambitious, unrealistic Willy Loman, and The Storied Life cannot be called a tragedy. But there is an underlying melancholy tone to the story. This is really part of its charm. Amelia confesses:
I love Island Books with all my heart. I do not believe in God. I have no religion. But this to me is as close to a church as I have known in this life. It is a holy place.
As was said long ago, Ars longa vita brevis. Good stories outlive their authors and their readers because, as Thoreau put it, “Truth alone wears well.”
N.B.With its contemporary setting, one of the saddest or most melancholy features of this book is that it seems like every adult character has sex on his or her first date. Perhaps that is a realistic view of our world today. If so, it is sad indeed.