Squash Your Inner Cynic

In order to enjoy this book, you have to squash your inner cynic but if you do, you will find this tale of a cranky book store owner in a small resort town/island off the coast of Massuchusetts a charming good time. A.J. Fikry is an old man at forty-five, grieving for his dead wife and annoyed at many of his customers’ tastes in fiction. In a matter of days, several events happen that begin to pull him out of his funk—he has a disasterous encounter with a publishing rep, a valuable book is stolen from his house, and he finds an even more valuable package left behind in his bookstore.

One of the members of my book club immediately made the connection beween this story and Silas Marner and though I thought I had blocked out most of my memories of that book from high school, as soon as she said it, I realized it was true. Still, what makes the book really work for me is the love the author clearly has for the characters and the way that the love for books and those who read them oozes from every page.