This book, first published in 2014, has been grinning beckoningly at me from my digital TBR pile for several months. I simply cannot remember who recommended it but someone must have done or I wouldn’t have bought it. Anyway, whoever you are, if you’re reading this, thank you very much. I loved it.
It’s the most bookish book I’ve read in a while but that doesn’t mean it’s remotely abstruse. Rather, it’s a sparky work of fiction that celebrates the power, importance and joy of books and reading – with much warmth, affection. wit and, sometimes poignancy.
The titular AJ Fikry owns and runs a bookshop on fictional Alice Island which is off Cape Cod. We first meet him at the point when he has turned to hard drinking in a search for oblivion to blot out the agony of his wife’s recent death. He can’t run the shop without her so he’ll probably retire on the proceeds of his most valuable possession – a rare, early copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane. One night, while he’s blotto, the book is mysteriously stolen. Once you remember Silas Marner’s golden guineas there are no surprises at what comes next. Yes, that’s right: A toddler is abandoned in his shop.
What follows is a joyful story about AJ’s rehabilitation, born of the need to look after Maya. You have to suspend disbelief a bit and accept that the authorities permit him first to foster, and then to adopt her. She is bright and engaging and AJ talks to her as if she were at the very least a post-doc intern so she becomes highly articulate. Each chapter is headed with an introduction to another (real) book addressed to Maya. Eventually he finds a love interest too with books and the book trade always underpinning everything he does and lives for. I chuckled at AJ’s fury when his mother turns up with e-readers for Christmas. Of course I understand his position but there’s room for both. I read The Collected Works of AJ Fikry on Kindle after all.
It’s a gloriously positive book. I relished, for instance the character of Lambiase, local Police Chief who becomes a friend to AJ and godfather to Maya. He doesn’t read much but starts a crime fiction book club for his colleagues. Ever more hooked, he has evolved into an irrepressible bibliophile by the end of the novel which spans a couple of decades.
An affectionately affirming novel, it never stoops to banal sentimentality. We do learn, eventually, what happened to Maya’s mother and she doesn’t get a happy ending. And the end of the novel itself is bitter-sweetly rooted in realism rather than resorting to anything chocolate-boxy.
You don’t need to adore books and bookshops to enjoy this novel but if you do, it adds an extra dimension. And why “collected works”? Well, the literary reference is obvious but it’s also how AJ sums up life. Our lives, he thinks, are simply our collected works and I rather like that.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: In Search of Beethoven by John Suchet
