The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

- Gabrielle Zevin
 

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I have misgivings about books (and movies) that open with a 30-something woman, bright but apparently unattractive (messy hair, shabby dress, and on the heavier side to score bonus points), being nagged by her mother to hurry up and get married, while herself ruing over her inability to "get a man" (how I hate that kind of phrase!). However, "The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry" has been so highly regarded amongst the "books about books", including two of my bibliophile friends whose opinion I value, that I had much hope with it despite the regrettable start.

It sustained this hope for the next couple of chapters, while it looked at the life of an eccentric bookseller Fikry, who is struggling with grief, unable to cope with his wife's untimely death. Beyond this, it falls into the usual tropes of chick-lit, a genre that I have been unable to like.

Each chapter begins with a well-known short story, the preferred literary form of Fikry. Be warned - they have major spoilers (in case you haven’t read the story yet). I must confess that I haven't read many of these stories, but from the few I have read, I did not make a connection between the cited story and the ground covered in that chapter. It is entirely possible that there is a correlation and I missed it, but the outcome is that it didn't work for me and rather felt like a gimmick just to attract book lovers. Because if you remove these literary introductions, what remains is an entirely predictable, fluffy story-line. We have a grumpy misanthrope who is transformed by the responsibility of taking care of a child; the grief-stricken widower who finds love again with a lady towards whom he is antagonistic in the beginning.

The theme was certainly interesting - the premise of a well-known story mirrored in the life of a lover of books, but the execution of this idea was not done well. I must be one of the rare bibliophiles who did not like this book, but that is how it is.