Monsieur Perdu can prescribe the perfect book for a broken heart. But can he fix his own? 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 … 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.
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really enjoyed this. we all need a literary apothecary
This was a cute story about a man who loved books, and lived to share his recommendations to his customers. This was a short read, and a huge turn around from what I usually choose to read. It wasn’t the best book I’ve read, but I did find it enjoyable. A quote from the book: “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.”
Very enjoyable book. The owner of the book barge on the Seine has spent the last 20 years blocking himself off from most human relationships as he is unable to face the way the love of his life left him all those years ago (but he does befriend the feral cats who enjoy the barge). His barge is a “literary apothecary” as he has a gift for seeing what a person needs and what book can bring that.
When he is forced to face the end of that love, he learns things were not as he thought.
Now he is off on a mission to find forgiveness from his lost love, travelling the waterways of France with his feral cats, a young author hiding from the success of his first and only book, and a lovelorn chef. Their adventures along the way are very entertaining and each of the men finds new meaning to their lives and learn to love again.
Truly delightful in every way.
A beautiful and sometimes painful look at grieving and loss. Not an easy read for me, but the story really was well done. Good main character writing, a bit maudlin at times – but not too much. I did enjoy this one a lot.
What a sweet book. Much on the order of A Man Called Ove and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. Beautifully written portrayals of different characters with wonderful sharp references to current popular and some obscure book titles. Very engaging.
A bittersweet yet quirky and often humorous look about lost loves, elusive dreams and a trip down the Seine to recapture the essence of living. The Little Paris Bookshop will have you flipping the pages as quickly as you can while at the same time savouring every word that touches something in you that holds true. Truly spectacular!
Do you ever feel a book rather than read it? If so, this is a book that takes you on an emotional journey. Not a rollercoaster, more of a meander through troughs and peaks, around new corners and deep within caverns. Beautiful and almost hypnotic.
This book is the most beautiful homage to readers and book lovers, as well as the deepest romantics. It is a blissful sigh of a read.
Incredibly boring and trite. Would not recommend
I’ve had this book on my shelf for a few years. I was looking for something escapist, so I picked it up and was delighted I did. It’s charming, funny, romantic and magical, with a great setting (or settings) and wonderful characters. It’s about grief and love and having the courage to start over. In other words, it’s the perfect read for right now.
I loved this book that praises the healing power of books and reading. Nice, adventurous, witty. A perfect summer read.
A must-read for any lover of reading – and anyone needing an outlet to understand and channel their grief for a lost loved one.
I really did love this book. Yes, it’s predictable, but it doesn’t purport to be anything but. And what isn’t to like? It’s a love letter to books and a literary tradition that’s most closely associated with the past and feels slightly archaic and slightly elegiac. Indeed, as we travel the waterways of France, we do feel the present slipping into the past and gain a sense of the world as understood through words.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book with its quirky characters. A bit of love and romance, discovery, complex relationships, friendships, and an adventure! Beautiful descriptions of Paris and the countryside of France…
I struggled at first, but the further I went, the more I liked it.
An eccentric book seller, his quest for forgiveness, coming to terms with his emotions and the past.
What an AMAZING book that I absolutely love!!! Seldom does a book will come along that changes your way of thinking, speaks to your heart and soul and blows you away… well this is that book for me! The Little Paris Bookshop is about life, love, learning how to live fully, rediscovering ones self and everything in between! Beautifully written, all the words just flow right into your heart. I would recommend this book to everyone!
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George: After reading and enjoying George’s Little French Bistro, I picked up this novel expecting the same enjoyment. I did enjoy it very much, and although the premise is somewhat the same, it really is a very different story. Both novels are short and relate the stories of people coming to terms with their lives, making changes, falling in love, moving on. Yet, the means and the impetus are totally different.
The Little Paris Bookshop is a barge on the river in Paris. The owner has a knack of recommending the perfect book for each customer who comes in. The love of his life left him many years ago, and he lives in total obscurity, until a lovely woman moves in the apartment across from him. That is the beginning of change. While in the French Bistro, I sympathized and supported the main character immediately, the main character in Paris Bookshop isn’t quite so sympathetic in the beginning. In the end, I fell in love with him and everyone he encountered on his journey of change.
Both stories contain near magical elements that warm the heart. Each character is someone the reader might enjoy knowing.
I absolutely loved this The Little Paris Bookshop!! I felt like I was floating down the Seine with them. I loved the writing and the characters. A perfect book for a lazy day.
The Little Paris Book Shop is a book that will steal your heart. It is a story of miscommunication with disastrous consequences. By a simple act, lives are changed forever. The repercussions resound through twenty-years leaving a trail of broken hearts. Jean Perdu and Manon Morello shared a secret love, a love outside her marriage for five years. Born in Provence, Manon felt a desire to experience more of life and love. On a train to Paris, she found it, she found it with Jean. When for reasons the reader will later learn she abruptly ends her relationship with Jean, the wheels of heartbreak are put into motion. Jean will live, or not live, for the next twenty years in a parallel universe of loss and despair. His only solace is his floating book barge, Lulu, the Literary Apothecary that for twenty years was moored to a bank on the Seine in Paris. From his floating book shop, he gains the reputation of prescribing the right book for each person. He offers psychological healing through the pages of books, at least for everyone other than himself.
Fate intervenes and Jean at long last is motivated to seek the answers to the events that transformed his life. He sets off with a young man, a bestselling author, who is searching for his own purpose. Together they journey down the rivers of France to Avignon, and ultimately sans the barge, to Provence and the Luberon gathering a few kindred souls along the way. The journey will open doors, bring closure, and transform all of their lives.
I strongly recommend The Little Paris Book Shop, please don’t hold its best-seller status against it. It is beautifully written, however, I sensed some oddities in the translation. It was originally written in German and I believe French. Notwithstanding this book is a joy.
I quote a lovely passage, “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 begin to forget or cast aside those we’ve lost, then…then we are no longer present either… 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.”