Cuneo lost the love of his life too-in his case after just one night-and he has been looking for her ever since. Along the way, they pick up Cuneo, a Neapolitan chef who creates sumptuous Provencal meals in the barge’s kitchen. Jean recalls happy memories of naturist holidays with Manon: “He had run, naked and howling, up and down the fine, white sand beaches,” while “Manon’s hair dangled over her breasts as she rode naked.” Max responds with memories of his troubled childhood. As the odd couple passes gorgeous scenery and meets eccentric characters, selling books to buy food, they open up to one another. He unmoors his barge and sets off for Provence, intending to “travel south by water to find answers to dreams.” He hasn’t gone very far before he finds a stowaway: Max Jordan, who reveals that he is suffering from writer’s block and unable to follow up his successful debut. Overcome with guilt and grief, Jean realizes he cannot pursue his budding relationship with Catherine until he has laid Manon’s ghost to rest. He calls it the “Literary Apothecary,” because Jean has an uncanny ability to size up the psychic ailments of his customers (existential doubt, disappointment, various fears) and prescribe exactly the right book to shake them out of their doldrums. Jean owns a bookshop, housed in a barge on the River Seine. Max has repeatedly tried to befriend Jean, only to be rebuffed by the reserved Frenchman. There is the blind chiropodist Che and the claustrophobic pianist Clara Violette, but the biggest nuisance to Jean is Max Jordan, a hip, earmuff-wearing American novelist who is hiding out in Paris to escape the furor over his bestselling first novel. Jean Perdu lives in an apartment block in Paris’s Marais district, where he is friendly but distant with a whole host of eccentric neighbors. Described as “a charming novel that believes in the healing properties of fiction, romance, and a summer in the south of France” ( Kirkus Reviews), The Little Paris Bookshop was generally well-received by critics, although some reviewers found it somewhat slight and excessively similar to Joanne Harris’s Chocolat. Upon publication, the book quickly became an international bestseller, with more than half a million copies sold in twenty-eight languages.
The Little Paris Bookshop (2015), a novel by German author and journalist Nina George, follows “Literary Apothecary” Jean Perdu as he sets off in his barge-cum-bookstore to heal the wounds of a long-lost love, collecting a family of misfits along the way.
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