A book for lovers of books. A book for lovers of romance. Both descriptors fit The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George.
Monsieur Jean Perdu runs a literary apothecary on a barge on the Seine in Paris from which he prescribes for all sorts of ailments. (Sounds very much like my dream job of being a bibliotherapist!) Throughout the course of conversations with his customers, Perdu is able to tell if they need a prescription of books to make them cry, to make them stop crying, to help them believe in love, to help them sleep better.
As a reader of The Little Paris Bookshop, it is a bonus, but absolutely not necessary, to be well-versed in literary classics. I think it’s only important to love books and love reading! Over and over George writes magical lines that reiterate as much.
With all due respect, what you read is more important int he long term than the man you marry.
Reading — an endless journey; a long, indeed never-ending journey that made one more temperate as well as more loving and kind.
A bookseller ever forgets that books are a very recent means of expression in the broad sweep of history, capable of changing and toppling tyrants.
He calls books freedoms. And homes too. They preserve all the good words that we so seldom use.
I rarely stop to admire words on the page , but my copy of The Little Paris Bookshop has so many pages with corners folded over so I can go back and refer to quotes. And I have! The words are too pretty to forget.
Although Perdu is able to help diagnose ailments and prescribe literary cures, he can’t cure his own pain. He’s recovering from a love that he lost many years prior. His lover left him, leaving behind only a letter that he never opened! He gets by, but barely.
I read books — twenty at a time. Everywhere: on the toilet, in the kitchen, in cafes, on the metro. I do jigsaw puzzles that take up the whole floor, destroy them when I’ve finished and then start all over again. I feed stray cats I arrange my groceries in alphabetical order. I sometimes take sleeping tablets. I take a dose of Rilke to wake up. I don’t read any books in which women like — crop up. I gradually turn to stone. I carry on. The same every day. That’s the only way I can survive. But that than that, no, I do nothing.
I love that description. I relate to it in ways I’m almost embarrassed to admit. But when things get hard, focusing on a routine, no matter how tedious, does seem to help.
Eventually, Perdu does open the letter, which leads him on an adventure through France atop his traveling literary apothecary. He picks up travelers along the way and is able to chase love – both old and new.
In one particularly beautiful passage, Perdu’s old love writes:
When the stars imploded billions of years ago, iron and silver, gold and carbon came raining down. And the iron from the stardust is in us today — in our mitochondria. Mothers pass on the stars and their iron to their children. Who knows, Jean, you and I might be made of the dust from one and the same star, and maybe we recognized each other by its light. We were searching for each other. We are star seekers.
How can that not make you swoon? It’s gorgeous. And it feels big and romantic and yet so small and within reach. George does a beautiful job in writing this story. It doesn’t go in a straight line but instead twists and curves much as I imagine Perdu’s path along the Seine must have. There were moments in the story when I started to wonder where the plot was headed, but it always ended up someplace good. For me, the challenge was just that I loved the early portion of the book on the apothecary so much that I had to reorient myself to a story that was focused less on handing out book prescriptions and more on chasing love.
The Little Paris Bookshop was a wonderful book and one I’m excited to share with friends. I hope you’ll check it out. Inside, you might just find the perfect literary prescription fort whatever ails you.
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These are other quotes I loved from The Little Paris Bookshop but couldn’t work into my review. They’re too good not to share!
Fear transforms your body like an inept sculptor does a perfect block of stone.
All of us preserve time. We preserve the old versions of the people who have left us. And under our skin, under the layer of wrinkles and experience and laughter, we, too, are old versions of ourselves. Directly below the surface, we are our former selves: the former child, the former lover, the former daughter.
To carry them within us — that is our task. We carry them all inside us, all our dead and shattered loves. Only they make us whole. If we begging to forget or cast aside those we’ve lost, then… then we are no longer present either.”
Looking for books to read? I read too many so get ideas from some of the ones I’ve loved!
