#TheStoriedLifeofAJFikry – Rosepoint Publishing

Rosepoint Review Recap-March-Hello April!

Definitely going to be a wet and wild April with lingering thunderstorms from March—a crazy pattern with warm temps to 70s plunging 40 degrees in a few hours. Normally, I’d be starting seedlings, thinking garden, planning appropriate veggies and symbiotic flowers.

First goal: Take down that poor tree in front of our kitchen window that only had one viable limb left. The CE surprised me by getting a big jump on it before I was even dressed and by mid-afternoon we had it down, limbs in the garbage bin, area raked and swept. What a job! I’m hoping it will be a good spot for some water plants. I tried lotus flowers last year, but failed to provide sufficient sun. This may be too much sun. We’ll see.

Old tree on the left and after it's cleared. — Old tree on the left–tree is gone on the right.

Hail, same spot — Hail one day later, same spot.

March is birthday month for me and I was celebrated with a visit from our daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandkids. The little ones are so much bigger than last we saw them, the youngest still a baby. They got to have a tour of Chicago from our son who works there, a short and sweet visit, but so happy to see them all.

Of course, we also celebrate Reading Ireland Month in March and I participated once again, experiencing a recommendable movie, a wacky newly released series, as well as ebooks and audiobooks. We made our usual corned beef and cabbage (better this year), which also made delicious leftovers—the CE’s fav.

The CE and I read or listened to a total of nine books in March. As always, the major source of our books is the library (audiobooks and ebooks). (We also review books from NetGalley and author and publisher requests.) The links on titles are to our reviews that include purchase information.

March Recap

Singing Bones by S G Ullman (CE review-publisher request)
Countdown by Sara Driscoll
The Burning Soul by John Connolly (CE review)
Murder in an Irish Churchyard by Carlene O’Connor

Audiobooks

See How They Hide by Allison Brennan (mini-reviews)
My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney (mini-review)
Thirst Trap by Gráinne O’Hare
The Compound by Aisling Rawle
To the Moon and Back by Karen Kingsbury

Favorite Book of the Month

Can I cheat just a bit and nominate a movie instead of a book? What if the movie was based on a book–written by Declan Power? The Siege of Jadotville was compelling and powerful.

Favorite for March – The Siege of Jadotville

My Reading Challenges page…March was just too busy to update. My Goodreads count is still off, but landing page shows 40 of a challenge of 175.

To all my dear readers and fellow bloggers, thank you so much for taking the time to check out my posts and reviews. I’m trying to up my bloghopping and hope to see you soon.

Book Club at the Y - March

Editors’ pick Best Literature & Fiction

Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Fiction (2014)

Another one I would not have chosen on my own. I love the way this book club is introducing me to good contemporary literature with multi-layered characters in unusual and unique settings. This one on fictional Alice Island, which is a ferry ride from Maine. A movie followed in 2022 by the same name and filmed on Cape Cod.

My Thoughts

The loss of his wife has left A J Fikry in a spiraling downward trajectory to ruination. He owns a bookstore, which he now detests, is losing money, doesn’t eat properly or at all, and drinks to excess. He rejects the publisher’s sales rep and suffers the loss of a rare book apparently stolen that he’d counted on.

Then someone leaves a two-year-old in his store with a note begging him to take care of her.

I had a difficult time with this audiobook. Not because I couldn’t find the beauty in the prose or the lessons it serves, but I found it profoundly emotional sometimes to the point of being depressing. Nor did I feel the ending made it all okay. Yes, I understood the character’s rationale better, but it didn’t make it a happy ever after.

I found a deeper investment in the precocious child, the policeman, and Ismay, and wasn’t thrilled with the direction turned for A J. The twist did catch me by surprise, but, again, only seemed to me to be another sad point in the well-plotted novel.

Many thanks to our local well-stocked library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own as well as my interpretation of the consensus of the book club participants.

Book Club Thoughts

The publisher provides specific questions for discussion at the book club, ably kept on topic by the facilitator.

Discussions by the ladies found that most were delighted with the book and cited the short length as a positive. They thought the choice of the bookstore an excellent one made by the mother for a number of reasons. They enjoyed the character of the sales rep, Amelia Loman, while I thought it didn’t particularly sound like an obvious counterpart. The book club ladies were in agreement about the way the character of Ismay is written and got into a lively discussion when the twist is revealed. And…there again, they thought it was a satisfactory ending while I was left with what I thought was an unfulfilling conclusion.

Book Club Rating

It should be noted that this novel was also picked up as a major motion picture in 2022, starring Lucy Hale and Kunal Nayyar, and is now showing on Netflix. I was surprised by how much the movie borrowed from the book, particularly dialogue. There is a small plot omission but the addition of the time stamps helped since the narrative spans some sixteen years and wasn’t immediately obvious in the book. The acting was great and I was surprised that I found more emotion in the movie than the book. It’s a good adaptation and the small nuanced changes smoothed transitions.

Book Details:

Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Narrator: Scott Brick
Publication Date: April 1, 2014

Title Link(s):

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Kobo

The Author: GABRIELLE ZEVIN is the New York Times and internationally best-selling author of several critically acclaimed novels, including The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and Young Jane Young. Her most recent novel is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, a selection of the Tonight Show’s Fallon Book Club, the winner of the Goodreads Choice Award, a finalist for the Wingate Prize, and one of the best books of the year, according to the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Entertainment Weekly, the Atlantic, Amazon.com, Oprah Daily, Slate, NPR, and many others. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is now a feature film with a screenplay by Zevin. Her novels have been translated into forty languages. She lives in Los Angeles.