Rating:  ☆☆☆

Author:  Nina George

Genre:  Fiction, Romance, Foreign

392 pages, published June 23, 2015

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In The Little Paris Bookshop, we hear the story of Monsieur Jean  Perdu who operates an unusual bookstore on floating barge on the Seine River in Paris.  Perdu, who calls himself a literary apothecary, has the uncanny knack of recommending precisely the right book for his varied clientele. The only person he can’t seem to heal through literature is himself.  After almost 20 years, he’s still haunted by heartbreak.  Manon, his one true love, left him with only a letter, which he has never opened.  When he finally does read it, he pulls up his anchor and begins an adventure of self-discovery and a quest to heal his broken heart.

Quotes 

“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.”

 

“Reading—an endless journey; a long, indeed never-ending journey that made one more temperate as well as more loving and kind.”

 

“Whenever Monsieur Perdu looked at a book, he did not see it purely in terms of a story, retail price and an essential balm for the soul; he saw freedom on wings of paper.”

 

“We are loved if we love, another truth we always seem to forget. …Loving requires so much courage and so little expectation.”

 

“We cannot decide to love. We cannot compel anyone to love us. There’s no secret recipe, only love itself. And we are at its mercy–there’s nothing we can do.”

 

“All the love, all the dead, all the people we’ve known. They are the rivers that feed our sea of souls. If we refuse to remember them, that sea will dry up too.”

 

“I like being alive, even if it’s occasionally a real struggle and fairly pointless in the grand scheme of things.”

 

“Kästner was one reason I called my book barge the Literary Apothecary,” said Perdu. “I wanted to treat feelings that are not recognized as afflictions and are never diagnosed by doctors. All those little feelings and emotions no therapist is interested in, because they are apparently too minor and intangible. The feeling that washes over you when another summer nears its end. Or when you recognize that you haven’t got your whole life left to find out where you belong. Or the slight sense of grief when a friendship doesn’t develop as you thought, and you have to continue your search for a lifelong companion. Or those birthday morning blues. Nostalgia for the air of your childhood. Things like that.”

 

“Habit is a vain and treacherous goddess. She lets nothing disrupt her rule. She smothers one desire after another: the desire to travel, the desire for a better job or a new love. She stops us from living as we would like, because habit prevents us from asking ourselves whether we continue to enjoy doing what we do.”

 

“We are immortal in the dreams of our loved ones. And our dead live on after their deaths in our dreams.”

 

“You only really get to know your husband when he walks out on you.”

 

“Saudade”: a yearning for one’s childhood, when the days would merge into one another and the passing of time was of no consequence. It is the sense of being loved in a way that will never come again. It is a unique experience of abandon. It is everything that words cannot capture.”

 

“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.”

 

“We turn peculiar when we don’t have anyone left to love.”

 

“Some fathers cannot love their children. They find them annoying. Or uninteresting. Or unsettling. They’re irritated by their children because they’ve turned out differently than they had expected. They’re irritated because the children were the wife’s wish to patch up the marriage when there was nothing left to patch up, her means of forcing a loving marriage where there was no love. And such fathers take it out on the children. Whatever they do, their fathers will be nasty and mean to them.” “Please stop.” “And the children, the delicate, little, yearning children,” Perdu continued more softly, because he was terribly moved by Max’s inner turmoil, “do everything they can to be loved. Everything. They think that it must somehow be their fault that their father cannot love them. But Max,” and here Perdu lifted Jordan’s chin, “it has nothing to do with them.”

 

“…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.”

 

“His father would presumably have signed up without hesitation to the three things that made you really “happy” according to Cuneo’s worldview. One: eat well. No junk food, because it only makes you unhappy, lazy and fat. Two: sleep through the night (thanks to more exercise, less alcohol and positive thoughts). Three: spend time with people who are friendly and seek to understand you in their own particular way. Four: have more sex—but that was Samy’s addition, and Perdu saw no real reason to tell his father that one.”

 

“Jeanno, women can love so much more intelligently then us men! They never love a man for his body, even if they can enjoy that too —- and how.” Joaquin sighed with pleasure. “But women love you for your character, your strength, your intelligence. Or because you can protect a child. Because you’re a good person, you’re honorable and dignified. They never love you as stupidly as men love women. Not because you’ve got especially beautiful calves or look so good in a suit that their business partners look on jealously when they introduce you. Such women do exist, but only as a cautionary example to others.”

 

My Take

While I enjoyed reading The Little Paris Bookshop (the name is a bit of a misnomer; it should have been titled the Literary Apothecary), it started to drag a bit at the end.  However, author Nina George has some great insights about reading, love and human nature which ultimately made it a worthwhile read.  I also enjoyed the adventure of traveling on a literary barge down the Seine outside of Paris.