Nina George's novel The Little Paris Bookshop is a charming and gentle story. In fact, if you read the description of the plot (barge, bookstore, French, healing people with literature, quirky characters, redemption), it sounds like it was calculated to charm. This is for fans of Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of AJ Fikry, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, The Guernsey Literary and Sweet Potato Peel Pie Society, or Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. It is, perhaps, not quite on the level of those books, but it is certainly aimed at the audience for that type of book. Essentially, the main character, named Monsieur Perdu, "prescribes" books for people's problems. This aspect of the book reminded me of Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin's The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness. 752 Books to Cure What Ails You, one of my favorite books. But while that book is non-fiction and offers actual recommendations for actual problems in the format of a encyclopedia, and is also somewhat wry in tone, George's book takes itself a bit more seriously. I enjoyed it, and I think those who are looking for more reads like the books mentioned above will be quite pleased with these title.
(I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.)
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