The Little Village of Book Lovers

Title:  The Little Village of Book Lovers

Author:  Nina George

Publication Information:  Ballantine Books. 2023. 272 pages.

ISBN:  0593157885 / 978-0593157886

Rating:   ★★★

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "'What do you do when you can't go on, Monsieur Perdu?' Jordan asked wearily."

Favorite Quote:  "It is you who make love visible in everything you think and say, everything you do or choose not to."

This book is in one word - silly. Love is a character. An olive tree is a character. A young woman, Marie-Jeanne, has the power to see and make connections between people. She can do so for everyone but herself. Her foster father dotes on her. Her foster mother is so afraid to show her love that every action reveals itself as anger or disdain.

However, somedays in a world full of anger and sadness, a silly, feel good story is just what is needed. When that story is also a love letter to books and libraries (even a small mobile one), it has its redeeming qualities:

• "... books are precisely where magic, the great wide world, miracles, and good explanation may all converge? Are books not the last remaining place for otherwise inconceivable encounters between different people, different periods, different landscapes, and different emotions?"
• "Books are the poetry of the impossible."
• "Because freedom ... begins where you first overstep your boundaries."
• "And nothing - I repeat, nothing - is a more discreet and incorruptible accomplice than literature."
• "Books at least made you think things over ... Book thinking was, um, flightier. I turned ordinary thoughts into buzzards."
• "Books are the last alchemy of our age. They make anything possible. Anything."

Set against the beautiful backdrop of southern France in a small village, this book has many characters and many repeating refrains. Sometimes, it is challenging to follow the different love stories in the making. Distinguishing between the human and the non-human characters adds another element of challenge. Eventually, I stop following the individual stories but rather follow the main theme of the book. So many people do not find love even when it might be nearby. Perhaps, "it" does not look like what they imagined. Perhaps, they don't feel lovable or deserving of "it." Perhaps, "it" is not what they have been taught they need and should want. 

The One by John Marrs takes a sci-fi look at the topic of identifying soulmates. The Matchmaker's Gift by Lynda Cohen Loigman makes it a natural gift in the hands of an individual who then turns it into a career. This book places that power in the hands of an individual because she is touched by "Love", an entity with an existence all its own. Other books have had other variations on this theme. Skimming through, this telling is a light-hearted, fluffy summer read.

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The Little French Bistro

Title:  The Little French Bistro

Author:  Nina George

Publication Information:  Crown. 2017. 336 pages.

ISBN:  0451495586 / 978-0451495587

Book Source:  I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "It was the first decision she had ever made on her own, the very first time she was able to determine the course of her life."

Favorite Quote:  "Every woman is a priestess if she loves life and can work magic on herself and those who are sacred to her. It's time for women to remind themselves of the powers they have inside."

As with Nina George's first book The Little Paris Bookshop, the premise of this book sounds like it could be a powerful story. A sixty-some year old woman remains in a controlling, abusive marriage for over forty years. The only way out visible to her seems to be suicide. That suicide attempt is how the book begins on the banks of the Seine River in the beautiful city of Paris.

As you might expect, Marianne's attempt is unsuccessful and lands her in the hospital. Her husband returns home, leaving Marianne to recover alone and then follow him home. Instead, Marianne runs. A found object, a painted tile, sets her on a path to Brittany. The name of the Finistére region on the west coast of Brittany comes from the Latin phrase meaning end of the earth. For Marianne, it seems fitting that she will end her life there.

As you might expect, she does not. Instead, she rediscovers life in and around a little French bistro in the small village of Kerdruc on the coast. A host of characters enter her life. Each brings their own back story. Each touches Marianne's life in some way, and Marianne leaves each one changed, providing just the right words and actions at just the right time.

As you might expect in a story about escaping the past, the past often comes to find you. The final step of the escape of course is the reckoning with the past. Oddly, the aspect that is never explored is why Marianne marries this man in the first place and why she stays in the marriage for over forty years. The corollary that then does not follow is how after a lifetime, she manages rather quickly to find her independence and her voice. That lack of development means that as a reader, I don't completely buy into Marianne's story. I don't ever feel that her character is fully revealed.

Unfortunately, as with Nina George's first book, this one ends up in a place that belies the strong premise. What sets up as almost a coming-of-age story for an older woman scatters into many other things. The book introduces a wide cast of characters and follows their stories in addition to Marianne's. While interesting in their own, following a wide array of stories means that no one story gets developed in depth.

What should be the story of a woman finding her strength also turns into a romance. I would love for a book about a woman finding her voice and her independence to remain about that. I would love to see the point made that coming out of a relationship, first learn to be yourself and by yourself before entering a relationship again.

Finally and unexpectedly, the book also introduces a magical element which is completely unnecessary to the book. Magical powers? Healers? Druids? Why not just people? On the other hand, that is the one unexpected element in this book.

Sadly, despite its premise, the plot and the characters fail to develop, making this not the book for me.

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The Little Paris Bookshop

Title:  The Little Paris Bookshop

Author:  Nina George

Publication Information:  Crown. 2015. 400 pages.

ISBN:  0553418777 / 978-0553418774

Book Source:  I received this book as a publisher's galley through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "How on earth could I have let them talk me into it?

Favorite Quote:  "Reading makes people impudent, and tomorrow's world is going to need some people who aren't shy to speak their minds, don't you think?"

Monsieur Jean Perdu is lost, by name and in life. The word "perdu" means "lost" in French. A lost bookseller in a bookshop in Paris - The description is a perfect hook to draw a reader in.

The book starts off really strong. Monsieur Perdu runs a bookshop, the Literary Apothecary, on a barge in the Seine. He sells books as medicine to his customers In conversation, he is able to hear their deepest needs and desires. He refuses to sell them what they think they want and then finds just the right book for what ails them. I love the idea of books as medicine; I have quite a medicine closet of my own, being drawn to different authors and books depending on what is going on in my life. The book includes an appendix with some of Monsieur Perdu's prescriptions:

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is "effective in large doses for treating pathological optimism or a sense of humor failure."
• Moby-Dick is "for vegetarians" and may cause a "fear of water."
• 1984 by George Orwell is "past its sell-by date."

The knowledge and love of books and a sense of humor shines through in these prescriptions. Had the book stuck with this theme, who knows where it may have ended. Unfortunately, this book turns in a completely different direction. It follows Monsieur Perdu, who has been able to find a book for what ails everyone except for him. He pines for a love years ago; he lives a solitary life holding on to his sadness, in effect building a life around that sadness.

A found letter jars his life, making him realize that all may not have been as he thought. On an impulse, he starts on a grand adventure to recover what he lost. The remainder of the book is about his romance, and the characters he meets along the way.

Unfortunately, I find his love story neither believable nor particularly engaging. Essentially, this is the story of one woman who openly loves two men and believes that "love doesn't need to be restricted to one person to be true." Both men seem perfectly accepting of both relationships. Of course, complications exist, but that is still the essence of the love story. Monsieur Perdu spends a large part of his life pining over someone who describes herself as "the voracious want-it-all."

When he discovers the letter and the truth, it's as if he has been released from his bond of sadness. That release is understandable. After years, a question has been answered; guilt may remain, but the sadness of being left is gone. What is less understandable is that he seems to immediately begin a new relationship. At one point, he gets the following advice, "Do you know that there's a halfway world between each ending and each new beginning? It's called the hurting time, Jean Perdu. It's a bog; It's where your dreams and worries and forgotten plans gather. Your steps are heavier during that time. Don't underestimate the transition, Jeanno, between farewell and new departure. Give yourself the time you need. Some thresholds are too wide to be taken in one stride." The book depicts Jean Perdu and his new love as two lost and grieving souls coming together and finding comfort in each  other. Given how he has lived his life, the abruptness of this relationship - the quick jump from ending to beginning - seems out of character.

 A story about a love affair with books turns into the story of a romance. How disappointing.

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