The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry Parent Guide

A.J. Fikry (Kunal Nayyar) is depressed, angry and lonely. The widowed owner of the Alice Island bookshop has given up on dinner and is drowning his sorrows in a bottle of wine while he stares morosely at his treasured first edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane. When he awakens the next morning, Fikry discovers to his horror that his rarest and most valuable book has been stolen.

Shortly after the theft, Fikry finds himself the recipient of an unexpected gift. Walking into his store, he discovers a toddler sitting on the floor with a stuffed toy and a note from her mother. In a letter to “the owner of the bookstore”, the mother explains that she is incapable of raising two-year-old Maya and hopes that the little girl can grow up in an environment where books and education are valued.

Not surprisingly, Fikry panics. But it’s a Friday night, snow is falling, and it will be early the next week before Child Services can send someone to Alice Island to deal with the problem. Unwilling to leave Maya in the police station all weekend, Fikry takes her home – only to discover that he is becoming attached to her. Thanks to a child welfare officer who is either flexible or desperate, Fikry eventually gains custody and Maya Tamerlane Fikry is legally his daughter.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is adapted from a novel of the same name by Gabrielle Zevin. Her book is, in turn, a reworking of George Eliot’s classic 19^th century novel, Silas Marner. The original novel is the story of a miser whose hoard of gold coins is stolen, leaving him nearly out of his mind with grief. When he finds a golden-haired little girl sitting at his hearth, his heart changes, and he transforms into a warm, loving man.

In both novels, the foster father/daughter relationship is at the heart of the story, but it is almost completely absent in the movie, robbing it of its emotional core. Most of the film focuses on Fikry’s budding relationship with Amelia Loman (Lucy Hale), a sales rep for a publishing house. This turns the movie into just another romantic drama and leaves little time for Fikry and Maya to interact with each other. I’m fairly certain that if all the conversations between the bookseller and his daughter were stitched together, they’d fill less than five minutes. (I think the movie actually devotes more time to montages of the Island Bookstore at different times of the year than to this critical relationship.) I have no idea why the screenwriter decided to gut the central part of the main character’s emotional journey, but the movie never recovers from the loss.

There’s a term used by geneticists – “clonal decay” – that applies to this movie. When scientists clone an organism, its quality will decline across successive generations thanks to the accumulation of genetic errors. I think this is what has happened here. Silas Marner is a great English novel. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is a perfectly competent contemporary book. This film, however, has lost its heart and is nothing more than a disappointment. It’s a sad reminder that good source material doesn’t guarantee a good movie.