Book review: The Little Paris Bookshop

EDITOR NOTE:
This review was written when the author Claudia Jacob was an intern at MyfrenchLife Magazine and has not been published until now.
Merci Claudia
Judy

The way in which the written word can elicit a reaction so potent that the reader experiences physical reactions is a magical realist trope that Nina George’s narrative turns on its head. Instead of the words provoking a reaction, in ‘The Little Paris Bookshop’, books are prescribed to abate anxieties and diminish distress. Literature becomes something of an elixir – the homeopathic panacea that mysteriously defies medical teachings.

Monsieur Perdu, is a Parisian bouquiniste who runs an antiquarian book barge moored on the Seine, named the Literary Apothecary (la pharmacie littéraire). He’s famed for being able to sense what’s weighing on a customer’s mind and prescribe them a novel as an antidote. Perdu pairs the idiosyncrasies of his customers and their corresponding work of literature with a Cupid-like ability: his uncanny matchmaking skills seem instinctive.

From José Saramago’s ‘Blindness’ (for those experiencing a midlife crisis) to George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (a remedy for chronic optimism); Perdu curates his book collection systematically according to their healing qualities – and it seems to have the desired effect. His patients keep coming back for more, addicted to the light relief that his diagnoses seem to afford them.

The concept is reworked from a type of psychotherapy known as bibliotherapy, in which storytelling is used to ease psychological distress. It’s intended to be a therapeutic method of addressing mental health symptoms. But Perdu isn’t claiming to be capable of treating medically recognised illnesses through his interpretation of bibliotherapy – his version is far more nuanced.

As Perdu puts it:
Books are more than doctors”: instead, his prescriptions target “feelings that are not recognised as afflictions and are never diagnosed by doctors” – the malaise, the doubt, the disappointment – the sentiments invalidated by medical solutions.

But Monsieur Perdu himself is just that – perdu.

He is lost and unsure of himself after his true love, Manon, left him twenty years prior, leaving just a letter for an explanation, which Perdu can’t bring himself to open, too weighed down by his own incurable melancholia in which even literature brings him no solace.

Overcome with emotion after beginning a new romantic liaison with Catherine, his lonely neighbour, Perdu feels compelled to open the letter and learns that Manon, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer unbeknownst to Perdu, returned to her husband in Provence and had urged Perdu to visit her. But it’s too late. Riddled with shame, Perdu unmoors his book barge and embarks for Provence to bid Manon’s ghost farewell and gain some closure.

It is on this journey – a trajectory both physical and psychological – that Perdu is able to find some form of self-acceptance.

Yet the blurb’s description of the compelling bibliotherapy premise sometimes feels a bit like clickbait.

Only a small proportion of the narrative articulates Perdu’s ability to match emotional distress with its corresponding work of literature, and the bibliotherapy motif becomes something of an afterthought. The fact that Perdu can’t be cured even by the healing qualities of literature also made the narrative feel a little unfinished. It’s as though the novel never quite reaches its denouement because the man who advocates the bibliotherapy technique so doggedly is the one who comes to realise its fallibility.

Ultimately, it’s the unearthing of Manon’s story that cures Perdu, and not the work of literature that he treasures, Sanary’s ‘Southern Lights’ (prescribed for authors struggling with writer’s block).

At its core, the novel is a more predictable romance story. Once Perdu leaves for Provence, the Literary Apothecary ceases to play its titular role and instead takes on its original purpose: as a vessel of transportation. The novel’s ability to weave works of literature into the qualms of the human psyche is delicately crafted – it’s only a shame that it’s short-lived.

Have you read The Little Paris Bookshop? What was your reaction? Please share in the comments below.