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<p>I kept thinking that Zevin might say a little more about Fikry’s family background, but she never did. I think he was supposed to be Asian Indian. It didn’t seem to have much to do with his personal identity, so far as I could see. I guess the “Vindaloo” was supposed to be a nod toward his roots.</p>
<p>I like that connection about them not being the same kind of black. It was definitely easy to forget that he was apparently from the Indian subcontinent. Where was the Vindaloo connection? (Can’t believe I didn’t notice because it’s my pickiest eater son’s favorite restaurant meal.)</p>
<p>^ Fikry had heated up a frozen vindaloo dinner the night he passed out drunk and Ismay stole the book. He threw the dinner against the wall. When he woke up, the mess had been cleaned up and the book was gone.</p>
<p>The Indian people I know only want to eat Indian food if it is authentic and properly prepared. They would turn up their noses at a frozen vindaloo dinner. I think they would rather eat a frozen dinner of non-Indian food…if they were even going to eat a frozen dinner at all.</p>
<p>I mean, if a Chinese person had the choice between a frozen pizza and canned chop suey (yuk!), I bet they would choose the pizza.</p>
<p>I kept thinking that Zevin might say a little more about Fikry’s family background, but she never did. I think he was supposed to be Asian Indian.</p>
<p>The book just says he’s “partially Indian,” is from New Jersey, and the youngest in his family. Did it say anywhere what the initials “A.J.” were for?</p>
<p>There was a lot of humor in “The Bookseller.” I could see Fikry responding to it, particularly on days when his customers annoyed him.</p>
<p>I’ve never read Lonesome Dove either! I wouldn’t mind reading a western; it’s not a genre I’d read on my own.</p>
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<p>This is from Gabrielle Zevin’s NPR interview:</p>
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<p>I believe it is just an Americanization of his name, Ajay. That’s what Nic calls him in the dream he has about her.</p>
<p>Thanks, Mary! Both for the name info and the interview explanation. I like that Zevin made the ethnic backstory intentionally minimalist.</p>
<p>Ajay is a Hindu name meaning “unconquered.” “Fikry” is a Muslim name meaning “intellectual.”</p>
<p>Caught up on the last several pages of comments. I’ve only read a couple of the short stories referenced, so nothing to add there.</p>
<p>I’ve read about a third of the Pulitzer Prize winners, not that I really remember all that much about some of them. Haven’t read “Lonesome Dove,” so would also be up for that as a next/future pick here.</p>
<p>shyparentalunit - while there are a few things I’m not crazy about here on CC since the site conversion, I’m not getting logged out every time. Once in a while I get “bumped” off – maybe on average once every other week?</p>
<p>The library was a favorite weekly destination for my brothers and me – Mom would take us every Friday to load up on books. I loved the Nancy Drew series; I inherited my mother’s collection and received many more as gifts. My D read some of them, but never got into the series quite as much. All the books are now packed away. Re: e-readers – I absolutely LOVE my Kindle, not just because of the variable font size, but also because it cuts down on the “what do we do with all these books” problem. I rarely re-read books, so the boxes and boxes of books were becoming a real issue.</p>
<p>Oh, as a final note, I have to say I absolutely hated “The Road.”</p>
<p>I’m just starting to read the short stories so I don’t have much to add there either.</p>
<p>As a kid, I spent every summer at a camp that my family had near Mackinaw City, Michigan. We were near the water and in the woods and there weren’t other kids around. My mom would take us to the local library that was open once a week and I’d get a huge pile of books and spend all my time reading. I remember reading all of the Nancy Drew series and then I started on the Hardy Boys. Also read a series about a nurse (Cherry Ames??) and then got into the Black Stallion series (which I loved–even though I was afraid of horses). I don’t have a Kindle or an e-reader; it would definitely be good to have one to travel. I think there will always be books and that bookstore will continue to co-exist with the e-readers. </p>
<p>I’m going to a Book Festival in two weeks and Zevin is one of the featured speakers–I’ll report back on her presentation!</p>
<p>^^Yes, Cherry Ames! I had a few of those. I read the Hardy Boys, and Trixie Belden, too. The latter series incorporated an addictive mix of girls, horses, summer adventure, and a mystery. Curiously, I find mystery a genre I tend to pass up now. </p>
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<p>Well, that’s fitting! Thanks for looking it up.</p>
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<p>Same here. And even with my Kindle, books keep accumulating anyway. Certain corners of my house look like a used bookstore, minus the “subtle odour of old cardboard and tea leaves” (and the rare first editions).</p>
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<p>It seems to be a “love it or hate it” kind of book. For our family, it was “love it,” although my son said that for a week afterward, he was afraid to make eye contact with another human being, lest he end up as someone’s lunch. :)</p>
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<p>Ah, you brought back memories, but not of Cherry Ames – I read the Sue Barton series. My kids have laughed at me through the years because I insisted on passing along Sue’s medical tips to them. (I remember that “never eat standing up” was one.) </p>
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<p>Wonderful! Tiredofsnow did that for us with Eleanor Catton and The Luminaries. It’s so nice that our book club is nationwide, with members out in the field doing research. :)</p>
<p>A few questions we haven’t talked much about:</p>
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<p>mathmom mentioned earlier that she was shocked by the death of A.J. How about the rest of you? I didn’t see it coming, but when it happened, I wasn’t terribly surprised. I felt the groundwork had been laid, even if I wasn’t fully aware of it.</p>
<p>Zevin writes about A.J.: “He is a reader, and what he believes in is narrative construction. If a gun appears in act one, that gun had better go off by act three” (p. 59). I think that A.J.'s absence seizures and the prevalence of death in so many of the short stories hint at “the gun” that finally goes off in the form of a lethal brain tumor. (FYI, googling tells me that true absence seizures aren’t precursors to brain tumors, but abnormal brain activity indicative of a tumor is sometimes misdiagnosed as absence seizures. In any case, the idea that something is amiss with A.J.'s brain gives the reader a subconscious clue about what is to come.)</p>
<p>I really liked the ending. I felt like the circle of life was going on. A.J. and his wife had passed on but his bookstore was in good hands and the new rep was going in well prepared. I definitely felt I should have been more clued in to what was going to happen - especially if I’d read the short stories as I went along or was so well read I would have already been familiar with at least some of them. 
I’m confident everyone will do fine especially Maya.</p>
<p>I knew someone with absence seizures once. It was very odd. Hers were quite short. As far as I know she didn’t have a brain tumor.</p>
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or in other words - Chekhov’s gun</p>
<p><a href=“Chekhov's gun - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov’s_gun</a></p>
<p>Yeah, A.J.'s death took me by surprise but I’m not unhappy with the ending. A.J. lived a good life - failed misanthrope that he was. The ending is uplifting rather than bleak. A.J. may have died, but Island Books lives on. A.J. himself would be pleased to know that Lambiase now nurtures his store.</p>
<p>I thought having Fikry die and pass the business on to others was melodramatic and contrived. Designed to tie the story up in a neat package and tug at our heartstrings. I wasn’t surprised when he died, because the book was full of manipulative tricks and this was another.</p>
<p>The ending of the book did move me, though I can’t say I shed a tear. Zevin’s craft had its way with me, in that when I got to a certain point in the story, I couldn’t put the book down.</p>
<p>Did anyone ever see the film Shadowlands with Anthony Hopkins as C.S. Lewis? That was a much more nuanced story of love and loss. (And it was true!) I’m reduced to weeping every time I watch it. </p>
<p>^^^ Shadowlands - Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger - good good movie - to be seen with a box of tissues. </p>
<p>*Terms of Endearment<a href=“book%20and%20movie”>/i</a>…another great story of love and loss. Coincidentally, that movie has Debra Winger also!</p>
<p>Terms of Endearment felt more manipulative to me than Shadowlands, just because it was made up. I don’t know though, wouldn’t it have been even more manipulative if A.J. had been cured by that operation? Except we somehow aren’t really allowed to have totally happy endings in literature any more. So in that sense the death was pretty predictable.</p>
<p>The funniest happy ending I’ve ever read was MacDonald’s sequel to *The Princess and the Goblin<a href=“which%20had%20ended%20with%20a%20perfectly%20normal%20fairy%20tale%20happy%20ending.”>/i</a>. I think he must have been badgered into doing a sequel. The Princess and Curdie ends with the standard ending - they are happily married, they have kids and then he doesn’t stop, he tells you that the kingdom falls apart after they die.Thanks, I really needed to know that.</p>
<p>^I thought there was emotional truth in Terms of Endearment because of how the mother and daughter were so at odds in so many ways, but the love was still there. Maybe that came through more in the book than in the film.</p>
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<p>Yes!! </p>
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<p>This is a good comment for discussion. I have always been a little confused by this term when reading about the flaws of various books. What constitutes a “manipulative trick” in a novel? When are a reader’s tears legitimately evoked and when are they not? </p>
<p>To me, a manipulative ending would be one that was not earned, with a plot twist out of left field, thrown in to wrap up loose ends. As I see it, not every novel can be Anna Karenina or The Grapes of Wrath, but if an author has made you care about a character enough to be moved by that character’s fate, then something has been done right. </p>
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<p>Yes from me, too! There is enough in the novel already that calls for suspension of disbelief. A miraculous cure would have been a downright gooey ending and not in keeping with the short story/short life/death cometh for us all themes in the book.</p>