The Little Paris Bookshop

Yep; still in Paris.  I read The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George about a year ago and am just now getting around to blogging about it.  Good thing I make notations as I read so I can look back and be reminded of favorite sentences, phrases, structure, character.

Nina George's latest novel, an "international best seller" (as I've read numerous times), is a lovely French concoction, meant to be read on a summer afternoon while sipping a sparkling rosé.

We have a bookseller, or as he describes himself: a "literary apothecary".  He is a believer in bibliotherapy, which I happen to believe in as well.  What is bibliotherapy?  It's the process of using books to promote a deeper understanding of oneself so as to work through social and emotional concerns.  Certainly, reading novels can help one put their own life in perspective or context.  I believe it can be especially powerful with children and teens, but valuable as well to adults.  

While our French literary apothecary has some deeply buried (but not for long!) emotional issues himself, he has built his reputation on recommending just the right book for his customers after having particularly discerning (but amazingly brief) conversations with them.  

The author is talented and clever and I enjoyed reading her well-constructed sentences and the ease with which she addressed intangible ideas and feelings that I feel are certainly apart of everyday living.

In this passage, the bookseller, Jéan Perdu, is talking about his mother "suffering from a pain for which there is no antidote":

There are women who only look at another woman's shoes and never at her face.  And others who always look women in the face and only occasionally at their shoes.  My mother preferred the second type; she felt humiliated and misjudged by the former.

There's a lot to think about in those sentences. Perhaps it rang so true for me because I always feel quite invisible when walking by the cosmetics counter in a department store and never being offered a whiff of the new perfume being hawked by the glamorous cosmetician.

Jéan's stated ambition is write an encyclopedia about common emotions:

From A for 'Anxiety about picking up hitchhikers' to E for 'Early risers' smugness' to Z for 'Zealous toe concealment'.

That made me laugh out loud; especially the early risers' remark which I feel is particularly apt! But that's probably because I've never been one! Plus I'm a firm believer in the fact that I can get as much dome from 10pm til midnight as any early riser can from 5am to 7am! Unless it demands sunlight,  of course, which is one of my least favorite things anyway!

The Little Paris Bookshop is filled with the obligatory eccentric characters that live in Jéan's apartment building, as well as the quirky and emotionally troubled friends who end up traveling with him when he finally decides to unmoor his bookshop (which is located on a barge) and set out to solve the mystery of his long-ago lost love.  There is no shortage of romance with a bit of "bromance" thrown in as well!

Nothing extraordinary about The Little Paris Bookshop, but it was a pleasant-enough read...or was it the rosé?

And thus ends my apparent "Novels set in Paris" rut.  Adiéu!

My rating 2 and 1/2 ** (out of 4)