Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsHas It's Charm But Wanted To Like It More
Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2016
As a bookworm, to read a book that celebrates all that entails about being one, can be both interesting and entertaining. There’s also something comforting knowing that there are others out in the world (reality and fictional based) who are in the same boat as you. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry I think is one of those books who does a great job of capturing the quirkiness and charm of us whose reading and books make up a big portion of who we are and our lives.
From the get-go, it’s quite obvious the book is going to center around books and reading. It’s in every nook and cranny in the story, from the characters themselves to the plot, one cannot escape the obvious. For anyone else, it may seem to be overkill or confusing. But to those who shares in A.J., Maya, Amelia and company’s passion, it’s par for the course and in many ways, reflective of our own feelings and quirkiness. That is where the book’s charm comes from. It’s easy to see parts of ourselves within these characters who share the same passion as we do. It’s something that’s celebrated and not used to have people stand apart from the general populous. In this book, if you are NOT a reader, then you are the one left out of the loop.
With all that said, the overall work left me wanting more. I just felt like the story moved at a fast pace where the author, Gabrielle Zevin, just coasted along on some of the finer details that would’ve added more depth to the story. I would’ve loved to have a deeper exploration of A.J.’s unique personality (I feel the book would’ve benefited if it was in first pov of A.J.) especially since his is an interesting mix of surly, conceited and likeability. I wanted to know the origins or at least how his thinking process worked. As it is, I spent a good portion of the beginning not really liking him which affected my feelings on the book (fortunately he became more charming the further I read). I also was caught off guard by some of the revelations later on in the story (e.g. Tamerlane, Ismay/Daniel/Marian/Maya connection, A.J.’s lifelong condition). To me, they just seemed to come out of nowhere, as if Zevin almost forgot about the events in the beginning and decided to provide explanations to them. They happened abruptly and I had to shift my focus to try to fit the new information into what I have known. If there little clues, mild mentions or something written throughout the story that let the reader know that something is not right and unfinished business still exists then perhaps everything else won’t seem so sudden and out of the blue.
I’ve heard about this book for quite a while and how many people loved it. I wanted to be one of those people, I wanted to like it more. This book is like thinking you’re seeing something from your peripheral vision, but when you fully turned to look, there’s nothing there. The whole reading experience for me was as if I sort of got what I was reading but in the end I didn’t get the full story. I got the surface but nothing else below. The only thing that made the book interesting were the characters’ love of reading and books. That specific feature made the book a comfortable and relatable read and provided that unique charm that only those of us who shares the same passion for reading and books can understand and appreciate.