Nina George

The international bestseller, translated from the German by Simon Pare. On a beautifully restored barge on the Seine, Jean Perdu runs a bookshop; or rather a 'literary apothecary', for this bookseller possesses a rare gift for sensing which books will soothe the troubled souls of his customers. The only person he is unable to cure, it seems, is himself. He has nursed a broken heart ever since the night, twenty-one years ago, when the love of his life fled Paris, leaving behind a handwritten letter that he has never dared read. His memories and his love have been gathering dust - until now. The arrival of an enigmatic new neighbour in his eccentric apartment building on Rue Montagnard inspires Jean to unlock his heart, unmoor the floating bookshop and set off for Provence, in search of the past and his beloved.

The Little Paris Bookshop

""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." 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. Internationally bestselling and filled with warmth and adventure, The Little Paris Bookshop is a love letter to books, meant for anyone who believes in the power of stories to shape people's lives"--

""A book is both doctor and medicine. It makes diagnoses and provides therapy. Bringing the right novels together with the appropriate people is the way I sell books."

a novel

The little Paris bookshop

kayla 

Hannah Yang

DNF at 109 pages.

I really, really wanted to love The Little Paris Bookshop. European setting? Literary apothecary? Quirky trio of wholesome characters? It sounded like it had all the ingredients to be one of my favorite books, and the writing is admittedly beautiful and easy-to-read (except for some sporadic erotic scenes). However, I'm disappointed that the "literary apothecary who can understand people's needs and prescribe then books" part seems to play a very minor role in what is actually an "epic" love story... except, our dignified Monsieur Perdu is the other man and has been pining for Manon for twenty-one years without reading a letter that she wrote him before she left. This alone was pretty much a deal-breaker for me, but Monsieur Perdu also had a very pompous tone for someone whose reaction to Manon leaving was so immature. 

In the past, I think I'd have stuck it out, hoping that things would turn around, but I'm at a point in my life where I value my time a lot, and this story doesn't seem worth it. I may pick this up again someday but for now, I will warn any potential readers that this novel is very much focused on a cringey love story, not a soul-touching bookstore.

Moth

-- A BLOGGING FOR BOOKS REVIEW --

My first impression when I picked up this book and started reading it was that it was going to be one of those amazing books about books and the people that read that will break you apart inside. And at the start, it did. It was filled which such amazing quotes, I have at least one line highlighted in each chapter for the first half of this book. It's well written and an amazing adventure. The only thing it lacked was a female character that was alive and on the adventure as well, but I did try my best not to dwell on it because the writing was simply amazing.

There was a few things that did bother me though in this first half. The first is Manon. At first, she's likable. You feel for her and for Jean when he finds her letter. But the more you learn and even read her thoughts, the more distasteful she becomes. I don't believe that she truly loved either Jean or Luc for the way she treats them by sleeping with them both and leaving them for the other in a game of back and forth. Both men say it's okay, and yet she leaves them both a mess when she's gone. No one deserves that. No one deserves to be cheated on, lied to, or have it freely shoved in their face like Jean did. 

The second thing that bothered me was that Jean claims he didn't know the truth about Manon's death, and yet we find out from Max that Jean, without seeing the letter, had cut out her death announcement and stuck it in a book. Which would mean, he had known about her death. But the book goes on with the theme before. Maybe it was a mix up in translation, but it felt messy and confusing. 

The problem is, once a female character does join the party that things start to fall apart. Samy was a really nice addition, but she quickly went from this long sought after person (who, I was able to guess she was right away when Jean started to press questions to her) to a love interest. Not long after Jean finds out this, she suddenly is left behind and the quest is taken somewhere else. Jean leaves her and Salvo and soon after Max (which, we didn't even get a proper goodbye with, despite the fact he was there from the start. This fact didn't feel right to me and even left me confused because it wasn't even explained right away). 

After half a book of character development from a loner, a man that lived alone and had no friends, Jean goes back to being just that when he see's a picture of Manon on a wine bottle as he abandons the quest and abandons his friends with all his progress and goes off to sulk for a number of chapters, reverting to his old self and leaving me as a reader bored and frustrated out of my mind. At this point, I struggled to pick this book back up. It felt like a waste of time. I had put my heart into it and it felt like the author was filling in chapters to have more pages than anything, when most authors write these lulls will make it one chapter and carefully grace over it so the reader doesn't feel the drawing out of the story.

The rest and the end was rather unsurprising. Manon still dies. Jean finally gets over his little fit and goes back to his quest with Catherine (another female, another love interest, nothing more), seeing Max once more, which helped a little, but it still didn't feel right, to finding out his possible daughter (which really isn't - shocker), to him finally getting over her death by meeting her widowed and remarried husband and seeing her grave. Oh, and a rather weird epilogue that goes on to tell the future, but doesn't bother to explain the purpose of the gathering, what had started it, and other such details.

To me, the first half of the book was worth reading and it was what saved this book from getting a worse rating. But the end wasn't worth much. It felt drawn out and then rushed, as if the author hadn't really had time to put it together and give it the magic and elegance as the start.

Stephanie Honour

A cloth bag containing ten copies of the title.

A Novel

Becca Leigh

Not what I wanted exactly out of this book, but still quite good nonetheless. While I expected it to focus on a man curing others through the power of books, it more so focused on the man grappling with his own grief. Love, loss, and all the emotions that come with are explained beautifully in here.

Sahi K

A book with the word “Bookshop” in its title is my kinda book, so I had to read this. I have to say this book left me feeling very very disappointed. Monsieur Perdu lives alone in Paris and owns a book barge called Literary Apothecary. He recommends books to people based on what he thinks they really need to read in their current emotional state. The love of his life walked away from him 21 years ago and he has just being going through the motions since, not letting anyone into his life. He knows everything about all his neighbors in his building but no one knows the real him. Until a shocking secret turns his life upside down and he embarks on a sudden journey to find life and love again.

The book is supposed to be about love, loss, grief and getting through all of them with the love of books. Somehow, I just couldn’t connect with the story or the characters. The book went on and on and after a while, I just skimmed a lot of the pages. Almost everything about the book seemed so unrealistic to me, even the fact that every single person we meet in the book is a book lover or reader. I would love if the world was like that, but it truly isn’t. The only reason I finished the book and even rated it is because it has some beautiful quotes that make you think and contemplate. Unfortunately, these little words of wisdom don’t make up for the lack of a good story.

Summer Stanley

I feel like this book started 10 chapters into the story. I needed more to care about the characters. The journey was a bit scattered and lacked development.

Fiona

"Reading - an endless journey"

I picked up this book because I had seen it EVERYWHERE. I did not realise it had, let's say... varied... reviews. Luckily I only decided to pick it up when I came across it second hand and didn't pay much at all for my copy. 

Any book with a travelling theme, however slight, is one for me and this aspect of the book was enjoyable. I liked the book at the beginning, however, as the story continued and we got to know our protagonist Perdu better and got deeper into his feelings, it quickly got tiresome. To say that Perdu was seriously hung up on this girl would be a consequential understatement. I just can't comprehend how one could waste 20 years of life pining and never bothering to do anything about it. 

The descriptions were fantastic - and this is coming from someone who usually skims descriptions because I don't care what the exact colour of the grass was. The author managed to find the perfect words to set the scenes and depict the beauty of France in the summertime without waffling on and using too many words than is really necessary for any description. 

Although this was a translated work, the humour came across amazingly well and I found myself laughing often which doesn't happen often when I read translated works as it is lost when I have to google what it means. 

The best part of this book had to be some of the golden nugget quotes that made me get out the highlighter: 
"The world's rulers should be forced to take a reader's licence. 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." 

  "The bookseller read Catherine like a novel. She let him leaf through her and look through her story."


  "Nobody would ever wise up if at some point they hadn't been young and stupid."

Rachel Benton

This book was okay, the story was a slow read from start to finish. I did like what she was trying to, but felt that it was poorly executed.

Judy Hudgins

Darren S. Layne

In a bit of a strange twist, I didn't want to like this book. Despite the critical acclaim (and the shining endorsement by Oprah, herself), my twee-meter does have a failsafe built right in, and I was half-heartedly concerned that it was going to be all fluff and little substance. Yet I persisted in purchasing it anyway and gave it my divided attention through a relatively slow start. Quickly getting used to the languid pace, I dumped my preconceived notions in the Seine and went along for the ride – and in the end, I was glad to have done it.

Nina George presents an earnest, charming peek at French existentialism through German eyes in an utterly European context. In short, to this American The Little Paris Bookshop feels like an anthemic meeting of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Cannery Row as witnessed by  Frances Mayes – but this is simply not how most Americans live, and the voice is distinctly Continental. There are many quirks, foibles, and suspensions-of-disbelief – small things – to enjoy throughout the journey, but the big (perhaps biggest) human themes are blended together in order to create a touchingly relevant tableau of love, loss, ennui, joy, and friendship.

These things aren't for everyone, but virtually everyone will confront them during a given lifetime. Some, of course, are "luckier" than others and everyone has a different threshold of comfort with the traumas of existing. We can't escape these themes in real life, so I found the book valuable and rather surprisingly hopeful, given the many long-suffering characters within and the grief-stricken storyline that tracks right up until the last page. Yet George respectfully whispers a (very Teutonic) message on the undulating fields of lavender and battering scirocco that feature as formidable characters in their own right: being alive hurts, but every heart-flutter and paper-cut is sweet and eminently worth the cost.

This might not be what you're looking for in The Little Paris Bookshop (which I feel is a poor title for the English edition; compare to the German Das Lavendelzimmer), but it could be said that we often learn the most poignant lessons when we're faced the other way. Death is inevitable, but the memory of life is interminable. Scars and ghosts bind us to pain and hollow out our capacity to live and love. Friendship often lies in the most neglected places. And perhaps most important, at least for me: while in the very center of despair, the depth of the human heart always hopes, and in that there is great truth and great beauty.

Scott Taylor

A bitter, refreshing taste obtained from love lost and found; a life of discovering meaning and editing that definition. Nina George writes this book for the troubled literary soul and it is the perfect prescription. There are moments where the words while wonderful are forced, but I have still highlighted many sections of this to reference later on. Really this book is a four and a half star rating for me. Perdu is a wonderful character who learns about life at a later age than most, but that's what makes him all the more special. He never should stop learning and growing for that is when he accept stagnation and refuse revitalization. I recommend this book for anyone looking for life lessons, picturesque depictions of France, and understanding for loving books.

Christina Hufford

This review was originally posted on my blog, here.

There's a lot to like in The Little Paris Bookshop, a novel by Nina George all about Jean Perdu, a 50 year old man who lives in Paris and works aboard a literary apothecary, a boat crammed with books which he sells to, and only to, the customers he feels needs them. Perdu can listen to a person, diagnose their ills, and prescribe just the right remedy of books with which to cure them.
Perdu reflected that it was a common misconception that booksellers looked after books.

They look after people.
What a cute premise! I love books steeped in bookishness, like Matilda, or Fangirl, or The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I was expecting The Little Paris Bookshop to be along these lines: a romantic, sentimental celebration of bookishness, words, writing, reading, love, and life. Sounded right up my alley -- what's better than books, after all?


  


And it was all of those things. Kind of. Sort of.

This book had something of a tonal dissonance for me. On the one hand, you have the premise: Jean Perdu lives in a puttering little apartment complex in Paris, where he owns three sets of the same outfit, works everyday on his book barge, and tries not to come into physical contact with other people. Perdu is a man still hurting, pushing himself through one day after the next, trying not to think of the lost love of his life.
Over the course of twenty-one summers, Monsieur Perdu had become as adept at avoiding thinking of --- as he was at stepping around open manholes.
When a recently divorced woman in the complex finds herself completely without furniture or any material goods, Perdu brings over some books to help her heal, as well as a table -- an old table he had stored in a boarded-up room of his apartment. Opening this room, fixing up this table, and finding a long unopened envelope in the drawer brings the life Perdu has been avoiding back into focus. The letter was from a love lost -- Manon, a married woman who passed away twenty-some years ago,  after she and Jean had a five year long affair. Her letter, which he locked away in anger, asked him to come visit her in her final days. Realizing the opportunity he squandered, Perdu decides to set sail in his book barge to visit the town, Manon's grave, her widowed husband -- whatever he needs to get some closure at last.

That, I like. That is a sweet, sentimental book about life, and grief, the question of when is it okay to move on, and the healing properties of a perfectly timed read. That's a book full of evocative descriptions of food, music, dance, wine, books, and life. That's a fun, fragrant, fascinating read.

That was not the only component of this book.

I'm not even sure how to begin. So I'll just go in: THIS BOOK WAS CRAZY, EXPLICITLY SEXUAL. There are so many sex scenes, so many vulgar words, so many descriptions that just just did not jive with a sweet little book about a bookseller on a boat puttering down the river to gain a sense of closure over his lost love. I'm sure there's an audience for this book that would love this kind of content -- buuuuuut, I'm not quite there.



It wasn't just the sexuality of the book that bothered me, though. It was the casual sexism. Every woman in this book appears as either a plot device or a sexual object. Manon's entire drama revolved around the fact that she was just so ~lustful~ and so ~full of life~ that she couldn't bring herself to choose between two men. An author that Perdu meets along the way says she wrote her brilliant novel in the hopes it would "bring me my man." They come across a naked woman painting in her yard who almost immediately has sex with Perdu's traveling companion, Max Jordan. (Who, by the way, is a bestselling author plagued by the pressure of being suddenly rich and successful. Not the most relatable problem to identify with.) One woman is rescued from falling into the river and laid out naked in the back of the barge. (Why? Why would these three grown men not loan her clothes?) And another lady dances with Perdu, escapes a violent fight scene with him, kisses him, then promptly exits stage left -- and never is she given a name!

The amount of casual sexism and objectivity of the women in this novel was pretty shocking for a book so clearly set in present day. (Harry Potter and Game of Thrones are mentioned, for example.) I felt the whole story was encumbered by this overhanging male gaze -- this was not the romantic bookish read I was signing up for!

(There was also a very sudden, intense, weird scene where an animal falls into the river and drowns -- lots of thrashing, screaming, and the men on the book barge can do nothing to help it. The animal dies, its corpse floats along the water -- and never does this gratuitously traumatic scene come back again. It didn't affect the plot, it didn't drive the narrative forward, it barely affected the characters for more than a page and a half. It just happened, for no reason, and it made me really, really upset.)

 
Really upset. 

My other big problem was that I feel very strongly, as a writer, that, no matter what kind of book you're writing, coincidence shouldn't drive the plot. And this book was tied together with SO MANY COINCIDENCES! They randomly come along someone by the side of the road that randomly ends up being so-and-so ... This person who falls into the river right as their boat passes by happens to be such-and-such person they've been looking for ... Coincidence, more than character, drove the plot along.

(Another aside: for a book about three men, readers and writers all of them, on a book barge crammed with thousands of books, this story didn't have a lot of reading in it. I don't think Perdu picked up and read a single book during his trip down the river. Disappointing!)

So, The Little Paris Bookshop definitely had some problems for me. The characters and the writing were a little too twee and precious, and while I understood the book was trying to convey this romantic Parisian atmosphere -- books! delicious food! tango! so many women wandering around free with their sexuality! -- after a while, it smacked sexist and sour. It bothered me that every woman they came across was immediately evaluated by her physical attributes and only contributed sexual things to the story. (An important kiss, several pages of sex scenes, love, love, so much true love! Apparently everyone in Paris just wanders around reading books and having sex with anyone who stops by.)

But, I do want to say, there was a lot to like in this book, and if you don't have the same aversion to "twee" as I do, you might actually get a lot out of this!! Some of the writing is just beautiful, and the author does evoke a heady, romantic, sentimental atmosphere. There are some lovely descriptions of food (and, if you're into that, some lovely and frequent descriptions of sex...) The overall theme is an appealing, important one, about dealing with grief -- not pushing it away and trying to forget those loved and lost, but embracing that you loved at all.
Death doesn't matter. We will always remain what we were to one another.
Had that message not been cluttered by some of the novel's more problematic aspects, I would've been far more enamored with Monsieur Perdu and his literary apothecary. As it is, I feel like I need Perdu to prescribe me a palette cleanser.

Similar books I'd recommend: 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society -- another romantic, lovely, sentimental book about books and how they affect the lives of their readers.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog -- another book a bit too precious for its own good, but which evokes a similar sensation of reading a Wes Anderson movie.
The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You -- A real life literary apothecary!

I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Amy Buckle

The Little Paris Bookshop was originally written in German and translated to English in 2015. I’ve had this book on my shelf a few years and have always been excited to read it, so I’m glad I finally got around to doing so! This book follows Jean Perdu who runs The Literary Apothecary – a bookshop on a boat that floats on the river Seine in Paris. People with various ailments come to him and he always know how to heal them and which book will be the right medicine. However for such a distinguished curer, he’s never been able to mend his own heart after it was broken 20 years ago. When a new neighbour moves into his building, and happens to be a reclusive author, the two form an unlikely friendship and Jean may finally have the catalyst to unearth the sadness that’s been within him for 2 decades and perhaps even find a cure to finally be free of it... read the full review here: https://www.amybucklesbookshelf.co.uk...

Momo

So, at first I really loved this book. It was like nothing I have ever read before. It was calming and charming yet chilling at the same time.
A Little Paris Bookshop tells the tale of a man in his fifties, Monsieur Perdu and his bookshop in Paris. What is fascinating about this bookshop is that the customers go in order to have their situations remedied by a book recommendation from the fellow owner himself. Perdu is wise and sweet and it is obvious that he himself needs face his past sooner or later for it haunts him.

On the other hand, it got to the point where the book began to drag and I couldn't finish it, as much as I wanted to. Perhaps this book just needs patience but I grew very bored of it.

Catalina Petre

I wanted to love this book, but I had to DNF it after 200 pages. I couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters, their dialogue was stilted and awkward, I kept having to reread parts ans didn't really care about the end. Almost a week wasted. I had such high hopes for this book. A pity.

Beth Bartholomew

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George is a novel of beauty, adventure and passions. It is character-driven, but the atmosphere and setting are incredibly influential to how I as a reader felt whilst being emerged in this book.  To label this a romance or a contemporary I feel doesn't do justice to the feelings it gives and the passions folded into the pages. Because really this book is an exploration into passion, love, literature and relationships. 

Nina George writes her characters in a way that they become the book. Monsieur Perdu runs a floating bookshop in Paris, his Literary Apothecary, where he helps people heal their souls in the books he gives them. In turn, it felt like this book was also doing some soul healing, spreading messages throughout about loving yourself and being comfortable in your own skin before you let anyone else in. But back to Perdu, this main character has flaws, he has passions and he had the drive to live. He owned this story, it was his journey we went on and others joined in along the way. I love how easy going Perdu is, it made this book an easy read. 

The atmosphere painted in this story, the waters of Paris, the floating bookshop, the characters swathed in their own emotions. It really made me feel at ease, this is a very calm book. It isn't packed with adventure in the sense of fight scenes, epic heroes or great discoveries. But more so that Perdu is on a discovery of his own that he needs to be able to rest and that is what compels this book forward. I didn't find the plot boring, I found myself falling into it, I felt I was there with the characters. 

The Little Paris Bookshop is the definition of a beautiful book to me. I look forward to finding other works like this.

The Little Paris Bookshop

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