THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP by Nina George

Published by ACABUS 2015

Translated from German: Das Lavendelzimmer (2013) by Simon Pare

Pages 340

ISBN: 978-0-349-14037-7

Genre: Romance

Key words: France Paris, Provence, a broken heart, book seller, book lover, love of reading, sailing the French canals, tango, love story, never assume you know everything,

Grade: 2/5

Translation: 3/5

Will I read more of this author: no.

Jean Perdu, the bookseller, has been frozen out of his life for 21 years since his big love, Manon, left him without explanation. He has smashed the furniture of his apartment; the bedroom with the lavender wallpaper is locked and sealed by books. Manon sent him a letter but he has not read it, he does not want to read it. His bookshop is a barge on the Seine in Paris. He knows his regular customers, whom he gives books as medicine; he looks down on the tourists, who only buy postcards. Jean has always been able to find the right book for everybody like a medicine but not to himself; although there is one book that he likes ‘Southern Lights’ by Sanary - one name, is it first name or last name? who is the author?

He knows the people in the building of his apartment. The book starts with a new woman, Catherine, moving into the building; her husband had replaced her with a younger woman. She has nothing, and Jean is asked to give her some furniture. He opens the lavender room to give her the table, the only furniture he has left. In the table he had forgotten is the letter from Manon. Catherine asks him over, so he can read the letter. He is shocked by what he reads, shocked out of his frozen and stuck state. So is it the letter or his feelings for Catherine that start him on his journey to wake up, start to live again.

Manon had asked Jean to come to Provence to her; so he starts a journey sailing in his bookshop barge along the French canals; taking with him Max who has writer’s block after his first novel became an overnight unexpected success. On the way they meet various people, including authors. There is a lot of talk about men-women relationships, love, and of course books, parenting.

The author is a feminist so there is a feminist question in the book, can a woman passionately love two men simultaneously?

Jean starts to write his Great Encyclopedia of Small Emotions: A Guide for Booksellers, Lovers and Other Literary Pharmacists; I for one will NOT read that.

My thoughts:

This is like the Journey of Odysseus coming out of the underworld, Jean is sailing along the French canals from Paris to Provence; meeting people on the way and essentially speaking about love and books; but it is all so ordinary and not enlightening except perhaps for Jean Perdu who starts to live again and angry with himself for having let life pass by.

Notice the name: Perdu in French means according to the dictionary: lost, wasted, gone missing or astray. Quite appropriate.

I believe the German title of the book ‘Lavendelzimmer’ was a better title, because that room held Jean frozen and stuck in the past; only when he opened it, did he start his journey. The bookshop is a minor side line in the overall issues in the book which is about what it is to love.

Now, this is a book written by a German woman, a feminist, from point of view of a frozen 50 years old Frenchman and written in German and then translated to English. Did she manage to do that in a credible way, I not so convinced. I found the language heavy, very German, which is often transparent. It has taken me four years and three attempts to get past the first 50 pages.

The book list is poor and not really what I would have expected for a therapeutic reading list, for example there is no poetry. And more men than women authors. The only book I approve of, is Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lingren, all children especially girls should have this book read to them with their mother milk! Also, I found it strange that in spite of all the literature available the author had to invent a novel ‘Southern Lights’ as Jean’s favorite.

Quotes:

With all due respect, what you read is more important than the man you marry (p11)

Small love. Big love. Wasn’t it terrible that love came in several sizes (p128)

Books can do many things, but not everything. We have to live the important things, not read them (p291).

Photos from my tour of Provence, France some years ago: