I first read The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin years ago, when I was still in high school. I enjoyed it but it didn’t necessarily stick with me. Fast forward to last year. I read Zevin’s most recent novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and got obsessed. More recently, I watched the movie adaptation of A.J. Fikry and found it delightful. On the heels of that, I decided it was high time to reread the novel.
What’s it about?
A.J. Fikry, a middle-aged widower who owns a small bookshop on a hard-to-reach island, has been a miserable wreck since his wife died. He’s largely resolved to drink and mope the rest of his life away when three events conspire to transform him: first, he meets a new publisher’s rep; second, his massively valuable first edition copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane is stolen; and third, a baby is abandoned in his shop with a note from her mother begging A.J. to take her in.
What’d I think?
This is a very sweet, very gentle book. It’s about relationships changing with time and about growing up and experiencing/understanding the world through the stories we consume. The building blocks of it, arguably, are quite similar to those of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow but there are significant differences as well. The stories in A.J. Fikry are books and short stories; in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow they’re games. A.J.’s story begins when he’s in his forties with a significant chunk of his life already lived; Sam and Sadie are fresh-faced newcomers who we meet as children. The most significant bonds A.J. forms are with his adopted daughter and the woman who becomes his second wife, while the overarching relationship in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a platonic friendship that is no less passionate or intense than a romantic or familial relationship.
I love it when authors write variations on a theme, particularly when they’re rich themes like the ones Zevin gravitates towards. Zevin is interested in writing stories about people who love stories, and I am a person who enjoys reading stories about people who love stories. I have always been a person who understands the world through the lens of the media that I consume, so in that way Zevin’s work really speaks to me. A.J. writes love letters to his daughter in the form of short story reviews; the way he shares his love for a person is by inviting her to read the stories that have touched him and to tell her to the best of his ability why they mean so much. Unlike Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow’s Sam and Sadie, A.J. is not a writer or stories. Stories mean the world to him, but he does not produce them. The stories we read (or watch or play) can be as personal and as telling as the ones we create, and Zevin does a beautiful job with that.
This novel is a treat for a reader. Of course, everyone reading it is a reader, but I specifically mean that this story will appeal to readers, the ones who love books as much as A.J. and Amelia do. It’s the story about a fractured community that comes together because a young girl comes to live in a bookstore. Everyone rallies around her and her adopted bookseller father and books become a major point of connection between them all. I have to agree with Amelia when she says that forcing young people to read books like Moby-Dick fool them into thinking they don’t like to read. (I agree specifically about Moby-Dick, which is arguably as much a textbook about whales and fishing than it is a novel, but the larger point is the one I’m arguing here). Stories are a way to understand the world and to connect with the people around us. A.J. and Amelia fall in love over a book that speaks to them both. Lambiase creates a community when A.J. turns him into a reader by putting the right book for him into his hands; he’d never read much before, but once he is turned onto it he starts a book club and finds a true second life after a long period of complacency and despair post-divorce. It’s about the books, but it’s also not about the books. Anyone who loves to read can tell you that, and there are a lot of shout-outs for avid readers to catch. My favorite is at the very beginning of the novel, a reference to The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which is one of my absolute favorites (and the scene, in which an annoying customer returns it despite having read it all, was painfully relatable).
You don’t have to agree with A.J.’s extremely narrow taste in books to love The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. I definitely don’t, and it is very cute to see how his bookstore transforms as he does. At the start he is isolated and only carries the books that appeal to him, but as he lets people into his life he starts to stock books for them as well, starting with children’s books for Maya and extending to detective fiction for Lambiase and beyond. It’s a sweet way to show his world opening up. No man is an island, but A.J. is his bookshop.
The novel reads almost as a series of vignettes. Although it is a short book, it covers a lot of time and instead of seeing relationships form slowly we check in with the characters every once in a while and see how they’ve developed since the last checkpoint. We see A.J. and Amelia meet, and even though they continue seeing each other professionally, we don’t get more than a glimpse of those interactions again until A.J. has developed a crush on her. We see Maya growing over the years, and watch as her relationship to the bookshop changes as she does, but instead of showing it all we see Maya as a toddler, Maya as a child, Maya as a teen, and so on. It’s an interesting way of telling a story, and typically I wouldn’t like it as I like the slow, messy work of developing relationships. In this case, however, it works likely because each moment tells us so much about the characters and has a clear direction. We can see where they’re headed, and once we see them there we know what it took to arrive. Sometimes this sort of writing feels like a deliberate choice, and other times it feels like a consequence of a writer who doesn’t have the ability to write it the other way. Zevin is a very talented writer, and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry absolutely reads like the former. Considering the masterful way Zevin implements form in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, it is absolutely no coincidence that The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry reads like a series of short stories—A.J.’s preferred medium—within a novel.
What’s the verdict?
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is sweet and heartwarming and melancholy. It’s a short, fast read that uses form to great effect while telling the story of a grumpy widower who takes in an abandoned child and ends up opening his heart and his life to his family and neighbors. It’s about the importance of sharing stories with loved ones—our own stories and the ones we have loved. Gabrielle Zevin is a beautiful writer, and this is a lovely book (and the movie adaptation is pretty great, too!)
What’s next?
Want more stories about grumpy outsiders opening their hearts? Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman is a great one. A Man Called Ove by Frederik Bachman is another famous example of the trope, but I personally hated it.
If you’re looking for another novel about how books—or more specifically a book club—can bring people together, look no farther than The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. It’s delightful.
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness is a heartbreaking short novel that uses the telling of stories to help a young boy understand the traumatic things that are happening in his life. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is a phenomenal book about books. It’s such an iconic book about books that The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry actually namedrops it.
And, of course, if you haven’t read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, absolutely do that.
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