I really, really liked this book. It wasn’t what I was expecting, though. I knew the basic plot going in—twenty-year old congressional intern Aviva Grossman has an affair with a married congressman, and her life is ruined, while his turns out just fine—but the actual format of the storytelling was a surprise almost the whole way through. I expected to hear the story from Aviva’s perspective, since she seems to be the center of the narrative, but the book actually opens with her mother Rachel’s […]
Read A.J. Fikry Instead
Aviva Grossman is a young woman interning for a congressman when they begin an affair. He’s almost as old as her parents and married. It’s the early days of the internet and she keeps an anonymous blog about it, with seemingly few readers. But after an incident brings to light the possibility of their relationship the blog is found and Aviva is torn apart by the media. The congressman, of course, comes out relatively unscathed. Unable to find work after becoming horrendously Google-able, Aviva changes […]
I’m afraid that once your heart’s involved, it all comes out in moron.
I’m stuck between “I really liked this one but didn’t love it” and “I sort of loved it but didn’t LOVE LOVE it.” It’s very confusing. So I’m giving this a solid 3.5. Young Jane Young is told from the point of view of three strong female characters so PLUS right there. It has a bit of a Gilmore Girls vibe, as well, between Jane and her daughter, Ruby. It all starts, though, with a young woman named Aviva Grossman, who becomes embroiled in a […]
This book played me like a fiddle.
This is a modern retelling of George Eliot’s Silas Marner, but I’ve never read that book, so this review will have nothing do with it. For your purposes (if you, like me, have also never read Silas Marner), this is a book for people who love books. (So, everyone on this website.) Of course, some of your tastes will bounce right off it, but you’re definitely all the intended audience. Being people. Who read. A.J. Fikry is a widower who owns a bookshop on a […]
Tell me what you read, and I’ll tell you who you are
We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone. It was a crappy night, and I just wanted a book that would make me happy. I wanted something pleasant that I could knock out in one sitting, curled up in my bed and drinking tea. I thought The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry would be fine enough. I was wrong. It was exactly what I needed. A.J. Fikry is the […]
Sometimes books don’t find us until the right time.
A.J. Fikry is a middle aged widower who owns a bookstore on a tiny island; his bookstore is failing and he spends his nights drinking himself to oblivion. On one such evening he wakes up to discover his “retirement plan,” a priceless copy of Edgar Allen Poe’s Tamerlane, has been stolen. Then a baby turns up on Fikry’s doorstep with a note indicating the mother’s hope that her intellectual toddler would be better in his hands. Despite his lack of experience with children, Fikry takes a shine to […]
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