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“A place is not really a place without a bookstore.”
“The way I see it,” Lambiase says, “you saved A. J. Fikry’s life when you stole that manuscript. That’s the way I see it.” “What kind of cop are you?” Ismay asks. “The old kind,” he says.
My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart. We are not quite novels. The analogy he is looking for is almost there. We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that. In the end, we are collected works.
He will try again. He will never stop trying. “Maya, we are what we love. We are that we love.”
Maya is shaking her head. “Dad, I’m sorry. I don’t understand.” “We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on.”
“I don’t know, Izzie. I’m telling you. Bookstores attract the right kind of folk. Good people like A.J. and Amelia. And I like talking about books with people who like talking about books. I like paper. I like how it feels, and I like the feel of a book in my back pocket. I like how a new book smells, too.”
A place ain’t a place without a bookstore, Izzie.”
Lambiase and the first Ms. Fikry speak variations on the phrase, “A town isn’t a town without a bookstore.” Surely, they both must have read American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
