The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is Gabrielle Zevin’s 2014 novel, the contemporary literary fiction bestseller that established her as a name in adult fiction before her later Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow turned her into a major literary figure. The novel is set on the fictional Alice Island off the coast of Massachusetts and centers on A.J. Fikry, the widowed owner of Island Books, the only bookstore on the island.

A.J. is in his late thirties and has not been doing well since his wife Nicole died in a car accident two years before the novel opens. He has been drinking too much, neglecting the bookstore, and treating most of the people in his life with the kind of bitterness that grief can produce. His prized first edition Edgar Allan Poe collection is stolen from his apartment, and shortly after the theft he discovers a toddler named Maya in the children’s section of the bookstore. The note left with Maya by her mother explains that the mother is unable to care for the child and that she has chosen the bookstore because she wants Maya to grow up around books. A.J., reluctantly at first and then with growing commitment, decides to keep Maya and to adopt her as his daughter.

The novel follows A.J., Maya, and the wider Alice Island community across the years that follow, with the slow rebuilding of A.J.’s life around the unexpected gift of Maya providing the central emotional engine of the book. The romance between A.J. and Amelia Loman, a publisher’s representative who has been visiting Island Books for years, develops slowly across the page count, with Zevin handling the relationship with the kind of care that the wider novel requires.

Gabrielle Zevin writes the kind of literary fiction that takes its themes seriously while remaining accessible to general readers. The book is divided into chapters each of which is named after a short story, with A.J.’s recommendations of various stories functioning as a kind of literary frame that runs through the novel. The bookstore setting, the wider literary culture, and the various characters whose lives intersect with A.J. and Maya’s give the novel a particular warmth that has made it a popular book club selection across the years since publication.

For readers who enjoy contemporary literary fiction about books, bookstores, and the wider literary community, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is essential. For readers who came to Gabrielle Zevin through Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, going back to A.J. Fikry is a satisfying earlier work that shows her developing the voice that would carry the later novel.