Is there an audiobook of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry?

Yes. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Scott Brick.

How long is the The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry audiobook?

The The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry audiobook runs 7 hr 2 min.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin book cover for the Book of the Day contemporary book review

Our score

4.1/ 5

Excellent

Listen to The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

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EDITION PUBLISHEDApril 2014

Genres

Fiction Contemporary Literary Fiction

Themes

Second chances arriving completely unannouncedGrief and the slow return to other peopleReading as a way of making meaning togetherRegret over a life narrowed to one roomHope assembled out of an unlikely family

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Name: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Price: 11.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Gabrielle Zevin

Gabrielle Zevin

Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry leaves a toddler in a failing bookstore on a Massachusetts island and lets her rebuild the widowed, bad-tempered bookseller who finds her. A short novel about grief, second chances, and the particular hope of a town that still has a bookshop in it.

The Review

Our take

A.J. Fikry wants to be left alone, and for a while the island obliges him. He is thirty-nine, running Island Books on a stretch of Massachusetts coast you can only reach by ferry, a year or so out from the car crash that killed his wife, and he has narrowed his life down to a shop he does not especially want customers in and a rare Poe volume he intends to sell someday to fund his exit. He drinks alone in the apartment above the store. He tells a young sales rep exactly what he thinks of her publisher's list, at length, without apologizing for any of it. Then the Poe is stolen. Not long after that, somebody leaves a two-year-old in the picture-book aisle.

Zevin's smartest structural choice is the one that looks like decoration. Every chapter opens with the title of a short story and a few lines from A.J. about it, written for Maya, the toddler who becomes his daughter. At first they read like the handwritten cards taped to shelves in a good independent store. By the halfway point you understand that you are watching a man teach a child how to read him, and by the end those notes are doing something I did not see coming and will not spoil here. The device costs the novel nothing and pays for itself twice over.

The book is unapologetically sentimental, and your mileage will depend on how you feel about a small town where almost everybody turns out to be decent. The police chief starts a book club. The sales rep keeps coming back. Nobody is very complicated except A.J. himself, and several of the supporting characters get sketched where they should have been drawn. What holds it up is the shop-floor detail, which is exact: the boxes of returns nobody wants, the customer hunting for the one with the blue cover, the arithmetic of a store that lives or dies on a single good December. Zevin knows this world well enough to be funny about it, which is rarer than knowing it well enough to be reverent.

Why you should read

Bookshop novels with real trade detail
Grumpy protagonists worn down by love
Short, warm literary fiction that ends in tears
Anyone who loved Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

What to expect

273 pages you can finish in two sittings
Unapologetic sentiment, handled with a light touch
Chapter epigraphs that turn out to matter enormously
A final act darker than the setup suggests

The last third turns hard. I will say only that the turn is planted in the first chapter and that the novel does not flinch once it arrives. What stayed with me afterward is smaller than the ending. It is A.J. reading aloud in an empty shop after closing, working through a stack he picked for one specific child, doing the single thing he was always good at for somebody who finally needed it. A bookstore in a novel is usually scenery. In this one it is the whole argument.

Reviewed by Avery · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.1/ 5

Excellent

Listen to The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry?: Yes. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Scott Brick.
Listen to The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry audiobook?: The The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry audiobook runs 7 hr 2 min.
How much does The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry cost?: On Amazon: Kindle $11.99, Paperback $8.04, Hardcover $28.10. Prices as of August 26, 2026 at 3:46 AM EDT and may change.

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More by Gabrielle ZevinSee every Gabrielle Zevin book we've reviewed, with our scores.All Gabrielle Zevin books →

Common questions

What is The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry about?: A.J. Fikry wants to be left alone, and for a while the island obliges him. He is thirty-nine, running Island Books on a stretch of Massachusetts coast you can only reach by ferry, a year or so out from the car crash that killed his wife, and he has narrowed his life down to a shop he does not…
Is The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry worth reading?: We scored The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry 4.1 out of 5. Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry leaves a toddler in a failing bookstore on a Massachusetts island and lets her rebuild the widowed, bad-tempered bookseller who finds her. A short novel about grief, second chances, and the particular hope of a town that still…