The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry and Why We Love Books


I have just finished the second best book I have ever read, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin.  I strongly urge you to read this book; you will find your life richer for it.  I also suggest that you get it in hardback.  It will read just as well as an e-book, but once you start reading, you will realize why I think the book takes on an extra layer of warmth when read in paper.

There is no gimmickry in this book.  It is a legitimate narrative, depending on skill to move you along.  You don’t have a disembodied narrator.  There are no endless flashbacks or changes in point of view. I don’t mind these literary devices but an author should have some reason for using them other than that they are in vogue.  [If you have just read, The Book Thief, and now think your next book should feature Death as a narrator—think again!]

            The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is a book about real people, flawed but still owning great personal value.  The characters work through life’s problems without the use of fantasy, magical realism (which is really just magic, folks—don’t fool yourselves) or unbelievable coincidence.  In other words, we don’t escape to these people, we share a world with them, and can borrow some of their strength for out own.  There are more quotable phrases in this book than any book I have ever read.  I tried to include some of them in this column and couldn’t decide which to leave out!  This is a book for people who love to read.

Mine was the usual upbringing of a bibliophile.  Both of my parents worked.  Dad was a dairyman; Mom was an accountant.  Because of this we had a live-in babysitter, my mother’s maiden aunt.  She read to us every day from the Uncle Wiggily books by Howard R. Garis.  These were a never ending parade of chapter books about a rheumatic old rabbit, Uncle Wiggily Longears and Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy.  The two of them had one adventure after another, facing a list of unsavory types with names like:  the Pipsisewah and the Skeezicks.  Somewhere along the line I learned to read and moved to the Cave Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins, Runaway Home by Elizabeth Coatsworth (Alice and Jerry Readers), The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Freckles by Gene Stratton Porter; I was off and running and the world was my oyster.

Like most inveterate readers I was read to early and often.  I saw my parents read, there were books in the home, the library was an annex and what I was assigned to read in school just slowed me down. 

            The question for those of us who can not imagine a world without books is never, “What are you reading…” but, “How many are you reading right now?”  My default setting is biography, and I am slowly working my way through a biography of all of our Presidents.  United States history and science are second place, but, since joining a book club, I have become a fan of fiction as well.  There are some books I would not want to have lived my whole life without reading: To Kill a Mockingbird, A Prayer for Owen Meany, the Lord of the Rings series, Alias Grace...and now…The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry.   I don’t know what books you would add to this list, but I know you have them.  Good books make us better people. 

            Recommend a good book to someone you love, and keep the faith. 

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