Closing book on A.J. Fikry

Novel a bestseller, but story's move to big screen flops

I have not read Gabrielle Zevin's popular 2014 book The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, but the filmed version does not play out like an adaptation of a novel. At best, it feels like a tired remake of a Reader's Digest condensed book. A better title might have been Abridged Too Far.

Kunal Nayyar (TV'S The Big Bang Theory) stars in the title role as a grumpy, alcoholic bookshop owner on the quaint (and fictional) Alice Island, Mass. Fikry has little time for customers and doesn't even seem to like books very much. But he's a recent widower, so I guess he gets a pass for being such a miserable SOB.

Fikry's prized possession is an original copy of Edgar Allan Poe's Tamerlane, worth a medium-sized fortune, which goes missing during one of his drunken blackouts. Local cop Nick Lambiase (David Arquette) doesn't have any leads, and Fikry's acquaintances aren't much help either.

His sister-in-law (Christina Hendricks) says he might have tossed it in the ocean. Her husband (Scott Foley) suggests he set it on fire.

Fikry's life takes a turn for the bizarre when a 25-month-old girl is left in his bookshop by a mysterious single mother. Impulsively, he adopts the child, though to keep that from being too weird there's a quick cut to “14 months later” when the paperwork is complete.

Over the same time frame he falls for Amelia (Lucy Hale), a publishing rep who regularly makes the trip to Alice Island to suggest new books he has no interest in stocking. Their relationship is my biggest gripe among many with the chaste way director Hans Canosa lets the story play out. I don't demand to see these two lovebirds fall into bed together, but if you're not going to show the physics, at least give us the chemistry! Hale and Nayyar generate less heat than an Easy-bake Oven.

I'd happily forgive The Storied Life that lapse if it weren't plagued with myriad other problems of pacing and delivery. Between odd flashbacks and lurches forward (seven years in one instance) we are never given enough time to just sit with the tale. Hendricks's character, for instance, has a rich backstory, but it only comes into play when the main plot demands it.

Maybe the book is better? It was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into more than 30 languages. But if it is the great read that its many fans claim, then this is a poor and blurry photocopy, possibly even missing a few pages.