Skip to main content

"There's nothing more elegant in the prose universe than a short story, Officer Lambiase."

I finished The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry in about 24 hours. Which should tell you something about it. It's about a grumpy bookseller who runs the only bookshop on an island off the coast of New England. His wife has died (HI TROPE, but I am ok with you) and one day he finds a two-year-old girl abandoned in his store. Then the rest of the book happens.

I got this ARC from NetGalley (it comes out April 1st), and when I saw the average rating, I was flummoxed. 4.49? Out of 178 reviews? That's...quite good. But as I read it, that rating made more and more sense.



It's a good, very readable book. I'd recommend it to most people as a "This will make you feel nice and maybe cry a little" book. I certainly teared up at lines like "It matters who placed A Wrinkle in Time in your twelve-year-old daughter's nail-bitten fingers," and I thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience.

The CAVEATS are mainly that:

1) It teeters between being made of solid writing and cliché/easily digestible quotes. Sometimes you feel like the author was sitting there thinking 'Awwww yeah, people're gonna Kindle-highlight this shit."

2) I super-feel like she can't write children, but that could be me being bad at knowing how children act. But I feel like it's not this:

"Oh ho ho, that is a very interesting observation, little girl," Leon Friedman replies. 
"I make many of them."



3) This is a book written for book people. So it's very "AREN'T THE BEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD BOOK PEOPLE" and you're like "YES YES THEY ARE 5 STARS." I'm kind of assuming at least part of its very high rating is that all the ratings are from people who got ARCs and therefore like reading and therefore like books about people who like reading.

...yes.

BUT, those minor things aside, it's really good. And fun. And runnnnnns the emotional gamut. Also, who doesn't like a book that takes place in a bookstore?

No one.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Harry Potter 2013 Readalong Signup Post of Amazingness and Jollity

Okay, people. Here it is. Where you sign up to read the entire Harry Potter series (or to reminisce fondly), starting January 2013, assuming we all survive the Mayan apocalypse. I don't think I'm even going to get to Tina and Bette's reunion on The L Word until after Christmas, so here's hopin'. You guys know how this works. Sign up if you want to. If you're new to the blog, know that we are mostly not going to take this seriously. And when we do take it seriously, it's going to be all Monty Python quotes when we disagree on something like the other person's opinion on Draco Malfoy. So be prepared for your parents being likened to hamsters. If you want to write lengthy, heartfelt essays, that is SWELL. But this is maybe not the readalong for you. It's gonna be more posts with this sort of thing: We're starting Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone January 4th. Posts will be on Fridays. The first post will be some sort of hilar

Minithon: The Mini Readathon, January 11th, 2020

The minithon is upon us once more! Minithons are for the lazy. Minithons are for the uncommitted. Minithons are for us. The minithon lasts 6 hours (10 AM to 4 PM CST), therefore making it a mini readathon, as opposed to the lovely Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon and 24in48, both of which you should participate in, but both of which are a longer commitment than this, the Busy Watching Netflix person's readathon. By 'read for six hours' what's really meant in the minithon is "read a little bit and eat a lot of snacks and post pictures of your books and your snacks, but mostly your snacks." We like to keep it a mini theme here, which mainly means justifying your books and your snacks to fit that theme. Does your book have children in it? Mini people! Does it have a dog! Mini wolf! Does it have pencils? Mini versions of graphite mines! or however you get graphite, I don't really know. I just picture toiling miners. The point is, justify it or don't

How to Build a Girl Introductory Post, which is full of wonderful things you probably want to read

Acclaimed (in England mostly) lady Caitlin Moran has a novel coming out. A NOVEL. Where before she has primarily stuck to essays. Curious as we obviously were about this, I and a group of bloggers are having a READALONG of said novel, probably rife with spoilers (maybe they don't really matter for this book, though, so you should totally still read my posts). This is all hosted/cared for/lovingly nursed to health by Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads) because she has a lovely fancy job at an actual bookshop ( Odyssey Books , where you can in fact pre-order this book and then feel delightful about yourself for helping an independent store). Emily and I have negotiated the wonders of Sri Lankan cuisine and wandered the Javits Center together. Would that I could drink with her more often than I have. I feel like we could get to this point, Emily INTRODUCTION-wise (I might've tipped back a little something this evening, thus the constant asides), I am Alice. I enjoy