The storied life of AJ Fikry - Gabrielle Zevin

Paperback, 243 pages

Published 2015 by Abacus (first published April 4th 2014)

Fiction

Library

This was another one of the the library is closing, let's grab a lot of books, book.

Character driven, nothing major happen, but all way through a really good book. Oh oh, it would make a good movie too!

AJ Fikry is a widower, he owns a bookstore, he drinks too much and he is grumpy. He is a total lit snob too, but, oh I forgive you. Of course if we ever met he would totally have looked down on my taste in books.

Amelia is a sales rep that comes to his shop a few times a year. Grumpy weirdo is the thought she leaves with, but she is still a constant in his life.

There is the cop that checks up on him and buys a lot f crime books cos of it. I liked him.

Then his priced possession is stolen!

And then the parcel arrives and his whole life changes, for the better. A grumpy sad man can also change. 

It was a pleasant and lovely read. It was all about these characters. A great random pick! 

We are not quite novels.

We are not quite short stories.

In the end, we are collected works.

A. J. Fikry's life is not at all what he expected it to be. His wife has died; his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history; and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. Slowly but surely, he is isolating himself from all the people of Alice Island—from Chief Lambiase, the well-intentioned police officer who's always felt kindly toward him; from Ismay, his sister-in-law, who is hell-bent on saving A.J. from his dreary self; from Amelia, the lovely and idealistic (if eccentric) Knightley Press sales rep who persists in taking the ferry to Alice Island, refusing to be deterred by A.J.'s bad attitude. Even the books in his store have stopped holding pleasure for him. These days, he can only see them as a sign of a world that is changing too rapidly.
And then a mysterious package appears at the bookstore. It's a small package, though large in weight—an unexpected arrival that gives A.J. the opportunity to make his life over, the ability to see everything anew. It doesn't take long for the locals to notice the change overcoming A.J., for the determined sales rep Amelia to see her curmudgeonly client in a new light, for the wisdom of all those books to become again the lifeblood of A.J.'s world. Or for everything to twist again into a version of his life that he didn't see coming.