The Little Paris Bookshop

This morning, as I was sitting drinking coffee with my iPad standing up in front of me, my husband asked, "What are you doing?"

"Reading."

"I think you'd be happy in this house alone, with 3 rooms full of books."

"I'd miss you some of the time."

I've mentioned before that he's a non-reader. He doesn't get what reading means to me. Okay, maybe I should say, he didn't get what reading means to me... until I read him an excerpt from the Acknowledgements from The Little Paris Bookshop and an excerpt from an interview with the author, Nina George.

I enjoyed the book well enough, but I really enjoyed the Acknowledgements and the interview even more. They wouldn't have stood alone on their own as something to love. But they were the icing on what was an otherwise wordy cake.

From the Acknowledgements:

      P.S. Thanks also to all the booksellers who help the magic to work

 on me. Books help me breathe better - it's that simple.

From the interview with Nina George:

Why has this novel resonated so deeply with readers?

Because it's a story about death and about how much we can be shaped 

by loss, by missing a person. Grieving, or admitting that the loss of a loved 

one has  derailed us, was unfashionable, forbidden for much

 of the past. Also, there is a dedicated community of people

 in the world who will always be able to ocnnect with each

 other across all languages, boundaries, and religions. 

It is the "Readers' Club."

 People who read a lot, starting at a very young age, 

are people who were raised by books. They have learned about

 forms of love and hate, kindness, respect, and ideas

 that are different from their own.

They experience the world as something infinitely larger 

than before. They enjoy the indescribable feeling of having 

found their trust selves...
We readers are book people, and Jean Perdu [the protagonist]is one of us.

The Little Paris Bookshop is about Jean Perdu who likes to call himself the "Literary Apothecary." He knows which book each person is meant to read to cure what ails that particular person. He uses books to cure the ills of the lives of his customers. He can heal everyone else's heart but he is unable to heal his own. He had lost the love of his life 21 years earlier and was unable to move past that loss.

The whole premise of the book, being able to detect what book a specific person should read, reminded me so much of The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. In that book, Victoria matches specific flowers to specific customers to help them overcome their problems. Meanwhile, she struggles to overcome the earlier hardships of her own life. I guess that's where the similarity ends. I guess that's where the similarity ends.

The "little Paris bookshop" is actually a barge that sits in the Seine. So when Jean Perdu suddenly realizes that he needs to do something concrete to heal his old wounds and start living life again, without much thought, he lifts anchor and off he goes. Joining him on board is a young bestselling author, a one hit wonder, struggling to come up with an encore act. Along the way they meet a lovelorn Italian chef. Traveling towards the south of France by boat, they share experiences as they which may or may not help the trio get their lives figured out.

The novel is billed as "a love letter to books." That's what I was expecting. I thought there would be many more literary references or opportunities to see which books got matched with which personalities and/or problems. Instead, it was really more of a love letter to readers. Which was fine. It just wasn't what I expected. It was also a book about overcoming loss. Loss of a loved one, loss of the family unit, loss due to disappearance, loss due to death. 

Parts of the book dragged a little for me. Perhaps because the book was translated from either German or French, some of the passages came off as being particularly wordy. (What's ironic is that the language reminded me of The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbary. Turns out that Jean Perdu's favorite book is The Elegance of the Hedgehog!) The positive of that type of writing is that the ending wasn't at all rushed. It was somewhat predictable... but then again it wasn't. I had watery eyes a couple of times during my reading, but when books somehow intersect with things the reader is dealing with in real life, that can happen.

I gave this book 3-stars on goodreads.com. I liked it. To whom would I recommend it? Probably to someone who loved The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Or to someone who loves to read books that are more character study driven than plot driver. And to someone who likes to be an armchair traveler to France.