The Little Paris Bookshop

by Nina George

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Jean Perdu is a bookseller, owning a bookstore on a barge floating along the Seine. Often referred to as a ‘literary apothecary’, for Jean Perdu had a unique ability to sense to perfect book to soothe his customers’ troubled souls. The only person he could never cure was himself and for the past twenty-one years he has been nursing a broken heart.

If it was not for the fact that The Little Paris Bookshop was picked for my in real life book club, I may have never picked it up. To be fair, this novel was picked based on the idea of bibliotherapy, without anyone reading it first. I was interested to see if this book was going to be as generic as it sounded as it is a book in translation; translated from German by Simon Pare. I did have hopes that this might end up as enjoyable as The Collected Works of A.J. Fikry, but sadly I was disappointed.

I normally love books about books but from the very start I was bored with The Little Paris Bookshop. It did pick up briefly when there was talked about The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Franz Kafka but this only lasted a few pages. My thoughts on this novel ranged from boring, cliché, overly sweet before cycling back to boring. I struggled to find anything to hold me through this book, the characters were dull, and nothing about the writing impressed me.

I tend to stay away from light reads; I like to be challenged a little, and I like to experience something exciting and explore interesting themes. There is nothing wrong with a light read, and at times it is needed. However The Little Paris Bookshop was not worth completing and if it was not for book club, I would have abandoned it (I should have). This is meant to be a romance/chick-lit type book but I have read so many better novels in these genres, and these are not genres I normally read. I hate to be so negative towards a book, but the only thing positive I can find with this novel is that it mentions other books, like The Elegance of the Hedgehog and the works of Franz Kafka.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://www.knowledgelost.org/book-reviews/genre/contemporary/the-little-paris-bookshop-by-nina-george/