My librarian recommended this one to me and she said “It is a little sad but a good book and book-lovers should love it”. She had this small handwritten note on it too. And yes, I now know that she is right. I just took the one point away for I found the story slightly cluttered. When a book has references about almost everything, it tends to take away the flavors accompanied with the subtle pleasure of munching, savoring and bequeathing one with the vivid details. This, however, makes this book a quick read.
A J Fikry owns a bookstore on a small Island in New England (a difficult destination to traverse with 2 trains and a ferry-ride) and he is aiming to send the bookstore into a ruin and slowly kill himself owing to a recent tragic death of his wife Nic. And then one day after he passes out post a drunken stupor he wakes up to find his only rare possession Tamerlane and Other Poems is thieved out of his house. And while he just starts to nurse the mourning of this loss, he finds a little cuddled up bunch of a human being, a 2-year old Maya, sitting on the floor leafing through the pages of one of the rare children’s picture books housed at his store (AJ doesn’t like picture books – Is AJ a book-snob? Oh yes! A big and annoying one at that). This story is about how Maya impacts the lives of AJ and other people around her on the Alice Island. It comes with a tinge of mystery encompassed into a lot of book-club discussions and book-views and book-recommendations and book signing events.
It takes a YA’ish turn on some pages and on some pages also resembles a chick-lit. What I enjoyed the most is the fact that how being a nerd has been looked at so beautifully and casually, the sporadic comparisons between e-readers and physical books and how one act of kindness can change an entire island into a book-readers’ club.
….”The words you can’t find, you borrow.
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.
My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.
We are not quite novels.
The analogy he is looking for is almost there.
We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.
In the end, we are collected works.”….
The book took my heart away when it said –
….“A place ain’t a place without a bookstore,” and we know how true that is. How important it is for all of us to cling to this diminishing addiction and be evangelists of this enlightening tradition!….
And it says,
….“Bookstores attract the right kind of folk. Good people like A.J. and Amelia. And I like talking about books with people who like talking about books. I like paper. I like how it feels, and I like the feel of a book in my back pocket. I like how a new book smells, too.” …..
And it has a bland truth spoken out loud:
….“Who are these people who think a book comes with a guarantee that they will like it?”….
We know no book does that because no human being is alike.
And when a tragedy from a book which we thought we love (we loved the book for the tragedy), hits real life, don’t we all feel this?:
……….“If this were a novel, I’d stop reading right now. I’d throw it across the room.” ……….
And yet we end up loving it, unconditionally, because somewhere the book taught us to prepare for it, it gave us the much needed ammunition to fight it. And yet it doesn’t stop being painful.
And I shall sign-off with a few more –
“There’s something kind of heroic about being a bookseller.”
“When she told me it was her favorite, it suggested to me strange and wonderful things about her character that I had not guessed, dark places that I might like to visit. People tell boring lies about politics, God, and love. You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?”
“There ain’t nobody in the world like book people. It’s a business of gentlemen and gentlewomen.”
“He knows she isn’t perfect. She knows he definitely isn’t perfect. They know there’s no such thing as perfect.”
These and some more little quotes like these was the reason I loved this book so much.
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