Srividya Madhu asked Gabrielle Zevin:

i loved reading storied life..it was such an enchanting read..it was in my to read list a long time.i believe all books find you at the right time in your life,when you are in the right frame of mind to appreciate it .thank u so much.there is one mystery that is left unsolved though..ajai.j.fikry,what does j stand for? dont know why it should matter,still it does.generally we indians dont have a middle name after all!

Gabrielle Zevin Thank you very much, and I am glad someone asked me this question! A.J. is only half-Indian, but indeed, he does not have a middle name in keeping with the traditions of that side of his heritage. A.J. is actually Ajay (he is only referred to this way once during the book during the dream he has of Nicole in the first chapter), and he uses this homophonic(?) version of his name as a way of trying to fit in. He probably began doing it when he was in school -- I imagine him, as a boy, having grown tired of a name he perceived to be exotic and hard to pronounce, a name that drew attention to the fact that he was "other" than the white people who were his classmates in New Jersey. By the time he was an adult, he had been calling himself A.J. so long that he had become A.J.

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