The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Between getting organized for my now twice-monthly column (stay tuned for tomorrow’s edition) and taking a few days off to go to NYC with Teen the Younger, I haven’t had as much time to read for pleasure, unless you count restaurant reviews, which are pleasurable in their own way, and Playbills.

But this week I finished a book I’d started before our trip, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin.  There’s plenty to like right away in this book — it opens on a ferry, and I love ferries. It takes place on a small New England island with a bookstore and I love small New England islands and bookstores. And the story moves along quickly at first.

A.J. Fikry is the somewhat curmudgeonly owner, Amelia Loman is a publishing sales rep., en route to pitch the winter list. Amelia is a “bright-sider” by nature, but the meeting doesn’t go well. Readers quickly learn that Fikry’s wife died, and he’s drinking himself into oblivion. But one night Fikry’s copy of Edgar Allen Poe’s Tamerlane — a very rare book — is stolen while he’s in a stupor. A short time later, a two-year old, Maya, is left in the bookstore with a note saying “I want her to grow up in a place with books and among people who care about those kinds of things.” Fikry and his new friend, Chief Lambiase, try to figure out how a bachelor running a “persnickety bookstore” who knows nothing about children might take care of Maya.

As the book goes on readers find out what happens to Fikry, Maya, Amelia, and Lambiase, as well as Fikry’s former sister-in-law, Ismay. Each chapter opens with a note about a story Fikry wants Maya to know about, with references to some of the other characters’ reading taste, and these little introductions relate in some way to the plot. They are also excellent primers on some terrific short fiction, sure to lead to further reading.The whole thing taken together makes for a pleasant read about reading, about life, about the fictions we believe and those we tell. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is also about family, and the way “shared sensibility” can build bonds even stronger than blood ties. And of course it’s a story of love in its many forms.

If I sound a little less than enthusiastic it’s because I liked it but didn’t love it. Some of the twists were too obvious, some of the story was maudlin, some of the characters a little too much to type. When Zevin allows them to be a little more flawed, a little more human, they’re more interesting than when she paints them into the quirky sales rep., the gruff but kindhearted police chief, the cranky store owner, the precocious child loved by all, etc. But I’d still recommend this novel to readers willing to overlook some flaws. Lambiase in particular is a wonderful supporting character. And this book is ultimately both warm-blooded and True, which is what all fiction should be.

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The Mindful Reader has a new home

The Mindful Reader ran in the New Hampshire Sunday News today. Good news for longtime readers: you can take a link to the paper and read the article for free, with no restrictions on how many times you can visit the site in a month. Which is good, because the column will appear every other Sunday.

Here’s this week’s lead, so I can entice you a bit:

“I
n the acknowledgements of his book “Wide-Open World: How Volunteering Around the Globe Changed One Family’s Lives Forever,” John Marshall thanks his ninth-grade English teacher at Manchester High School Central, Mrs. Singer, in whose class he says “a whole new world opened up for me” which led to his becoming a writer. We can all be grateful to Mrs. Singer, because Marshall’s memoir is an interesting, inspiring read. ”

I also review SNUH MFA grad Kenneth Butler’s debut novel Holy Fool. Take the link. Check out the column. Let me know what you think!

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When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning

Here’s a brief review I wrote for the library. Look for this book, it’s a nice uplifting story from a dark period of history.

When the CPL Book Club recently discussed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, one reader mentioned an NPR interview with Molly Guptill Manning. She tells the story of the Armed Services Editions, including the importance of Smith’s novel to the program, in When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II. It’s an inspiring tale that starts with the horrifying mass burnings and banning of books in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe.

American librarians launched a massive nationwide book drive to help stock training camp libraries and get books into the hands of millions of newly drafted U.S. servicemen. Although the drive was successful, donated books were sometimes too large, heavy, outdated, or uninteresting. In 1942, various members of the publishing industry came together to form The Council on Books in Wartime, and adopted the slogan, “Books are weapons in the war of ideas.” That sounds Orwellian, but the council was a force for good. 1,200 titles, classics and contemporary fiction, nonfiction and poetry, were produced in small, lightweight paperbacks called Armed Services Editions, around 120 million copies in all, shipped wherever Americans served around the world. Along the way, the council championed authors banned at home and abroad, navigated the politics of a presidential election, and promoted lifelong learning and a love of reading. At the end of the war, they produced a series of Overseas Editions and shipped 3.6 million of them to war-torn, book-starved Europe.

Manning tells what could have been a dry story with aplomb, quoting from dozens of letters servicemen wrote to the council and to authors. Her narrative includes enough history to provide context to those who haven’t studied WWII in a long time, and she includes photos and a complete list of ASE titles. Highly recommended for book lovers and history buffs.

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All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

You’ve no doubt heard of this book, which was on just about every “best books of the year” list for 2014. After all the rave reviews, I was quite curious to see whether All the Light We Cannot See would live up to the hype. It sort of does. I definitely enjoyed it, and I think Doerr’s writing is wonderful — rich in detail, fine, lyrical:

“He has tried every test he can think of without involving another soul,” for example. And ” . . . her existence has become tolerable. At least, out on the beaches, her privation and fear are rinsed away by wind and color and light.” And “To men like that time was a surfeit, a barrel they watched slowly drain. When really, he thinks, it’s a glowing puddle you carry in your hands; you should spend all your energy protecting it.”

The story is unique but also timeless. Two young people, Werner and Marie-Laure, growing up in countries that will soon be at war, who are connected by a mysterious radio broadcast. One hears it, one is the grandchild of the man who recorded it. Doerr sets their lives spinning and throughout the book, directs their orbits closer and closer, until, as WWII draws to an end, they cross. The novel’s structure, passing back and forth between these two characters, and back and forth in time, matches its narrative arc, which bobs and weaves.

But, lovely and interesting as it is — full of all the little pieces of Werner’s and Marie-Laure’s lives, all the supporting characters who flesh out their stories, all the historical background, all the science — the book is too long, and in places, too slow to develop. I had to work to get through it in two weeks, and in the middle the only thing that kept me going was knowing that a good portion of the book world loved it.  Some of the characters’ lives take turns that are deeply unsatisfying, but that is true of life as well. Some portions of the story are improbable and even perhaps a little too tidy, but I was able to suspend disbelief. Doerr doesn’t tie up the ending with a neat bow, he leaves a little mystery, a little for the reader to puzzle over, which I like.

So although I’m glad I read it and I can’t say I disliked it, I wasn’t wowed. I am sure many of you will disagree with me, so if you loved this book on every single page, leave a comment and tell me why.

 

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