Finished Fr 5/12/18
I got this book because YOUNG SARAH YOUNG was the April selection for the Contemporary Book Club. I loved that book, but I think I love this one even more.
A little on the 'YA' side of things (the author has written several Young Adult books), but overall, it's a sweet and touching novel.
It has a 'MAN CALLED OVE' kind of vibe.
PREMISE-
A man in his early 40's runs a small book store on the island of Alice Island- although fictional, it's like Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts. He was a PHD candidate and his area was 'the use of sickness in the works of A.E. Poe', and his wife was a poet. She has died in a car accident a year and a half before the action begins.
He has a copy of Poe's first book, TAMERLANE, and Fikry is going to use this as his retirement- it's worth $400,000 at auction.
The book is stolen one night while Fikry was drunk, and within a couple of days he takes custody of a two year old girl, Maya.
"When you begin to care about one thing, you suddenly care about everything"
The novel then becomes a kind of love story between Fikry and Amelia Loman.
The attraction of two opposites; he's rigid and set in his ways, and she's more of a free spirit. But, they both share an absolute love affair with books.
She is a book distributor for Knightly Books. They bond over a memoir about a man who finds love in his late seventies.
One of the twists of the book is that later, this author is invited to a book reading at the book store. He is merely an actor hired by the real author who is actually a woman. He looks nothing like his picture on the book and gets drunk and vomits on the floor. The actual author is there and Amelia talks with this woman- Leonora Ferris (not Leon Ferris, "The Late Bloomer") is very insightful and intelligent.
The book follows the relationship between Fikry, Maya, and Amelia until Maya is ready to leave for college.
Fikry learns he has brain cancer. His ex-sister-in-law returns the valuable book, Tamerlane, that she took. Maya had colored in the book, rendering it less valuable and would have revealed that her husband was Maya's father. He had an affair with Maya's mother and she commits suicide by drowning.
The novel is divided into thirteen sections. Each section deals with a famous short story or novel that encapsulates the 'emotional point' of the chapter. I plan to find and read as many of these works as I can.
Each chapter is a short story and here they are:
1) LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER Roald Dahl
2) THE DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ F. Scott Fitzgerald
3) THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP Bret Harte
4) WHAT FEELS LIKE THE WIND Richard Bausch
5) A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND Flannery O'Connor
6) CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY Mark Twain
7) THE GIRLS IN THEIR SUMMER DRESSES Irwin Shaw
8) A CONVERSATION WITH MY FATHER Grace Paley
9) A PERFECT DAY FOR BANANAFISH J.D. Salinger
10) THE TELL-TALE HEART E.A. POE
11) IRONHEAD Aimee Bender
12) WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE Raymond Carver
13) THE BOOKSELLER Roald Dahl
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