Throughout The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, the characters often find that life is art or vice versa. The characters struggle with the question, “Where does life begin and fiction end?” For instance, Amelia’s mother implies that fiction ruined Amelia’s chances for love, that Amelia is applying unrealistic expectations to potential suitors because of the standards set by the books Amelia reads. Her mother also believes that Amelia cannot distinguish between fiction and real life and that as a result she will never find a good man. Amelia embodies this conflation again when she self-identifies as a “winter title” (a book with a small chance of success).

Amelia is not the only character who has trouble distinguishing between life and literature. At one point, A.J. asks himself “What, in this life, is more personal than books?” (21). At this point in A.J.’s existence, nothing gets closer to who he is than books; he sees them as a better mirror of himself than the people around him.

Perhaps the most egregious conflation of the two worlds comes during the time after Nic’s accident, when reality has suddenly taken on a whole new tone for A.J. He compares his role in his wife’s accident to similar incidents in literature, trying to graft some preconceived plot onto what’s clearly just a case of bad timing and luck (25-27).