The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George – 400 pages
Book Blurb:
Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can’t seem to heal through literature is himself; he’s still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened.
After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story. Joined by a bestselling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu travels along the country’s rivers, dispensing his wisdom and his books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself.
My Review: 4.5 stars
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The Little Paris Bookshop was the perfect gem of a read. It was a book about books, but oh, so much more. Relationships lost and remembered, life refection, moving forward, guilt, forgiveness, solace, friendship and the ultimate gift of love for all things…people, animals, food, wine and books.
This book took me through Paris and along the Seine to a myriad of small villages described with a painter’s vision. Friendships were made and cemented amidst this journey as the characters found and embraced what they were looking for.
The idea of a Book Apothecary is brilliant, as was the idea of coining words for different emotions. The writing in the book was brilliant and I credit the translator immensely. It was originally published in Germany, 2013, and has been since translated into 27 languages.
George has a very poetic and fluid writing style, similar to Jan-Philipp Sendker of The Art of Hearing Heartbeats. While reading this, I didn’t realize how many quotes I’d earmarked and now I’m embarrassed at the amount!
My only criticism is again, in editing; there were certain areas that could’ve been condensed. Overall however, I highly recommend this book for all book lovers who love a good story.
Quotes I liked:
Loving requires so much courage and so little expectation.”
-“There are books that are suitable for a million people, others for only a hundred. There are even remedies—I mean books—that were written for one person only…A book is both medic and medicine at once. It makes a diagnosis as well as offering therapy. Putting the right novels to the appropriate ailments: that’s how I sell books.”
-“Books are more than doctors, of course. Some novels are loving, lifelong companions; some give you a clip around the ear; others are friends who wrap you in warm towels when you’ve got those autumn blues. And some…well, some are pink candy floss that tingles in your brain for three seconds and leaves a blissful voice. Like a short, torrid love affair.”
– “He’d know the two of them as newlyweds. They’d laughted together a lot back then. Then came the children, and the parents drifted apart like continents.”
– “Sometimes you’re swimming in unwept tears and you’ll go under if you store them up inside.”
-“Love, the dictator whom men find so terrifying. No wonder that men, being men, generally greet this tyrant by running a way.”
-“…a book is both medic and medicine at once. It makes a diagnosis as well as offering therapy. Putting the right novels to the appropriate ailments: that’s I sell books.”
-“My dear son, when you’re a woman and you get married, you enter irreversibly into a supervisory position. You have to keep an eye on everything—what your husband does and how he is. And later, when children arrive, on them too. You’re a watchdog, a servant and a diplomat rolled into one. And something as trivial as divorce doesn’t end that. Oh no—love may come and go, but the caring goes on.”
-“Books were my friends. I think I learned all my feelings from books. In them I loved and laughed and found out more than in my whole nonreading life.”
-“Whenever Monsieur Perdu looked at a book, he did not see it purely in terms of a story, minimum retail price and an essential balm for the soul; he saw freedom on wings of paper.”
-“The world’s leaders should be forced to take a reader’s license. Only when they have read five thousand – no, make that ten thousand—books will they be anywhere near qualified to understand humans and how they behave.”
-“Well, Jeanno…having a child is like casting off your own childhood forever. It’s as if it’s only then that you really grasp what it means to be a man. You’re scared too that all your weaknesses will be laid bare because fatherhood demands more than you can give….I always felt I had to earn your love, because I loved you so, so much.”
-“When the pain comes, I am incapable of capturing the letter inside my head. A mush of letters, overcooked letters: alphabet soup.”
– “The reality of love is better than its reputation.”
