The Little Paris Bookshop: a review

Nina George's writing is a master class of the true meaning of sensuality. On each page you might smell a riverbank, taste the sea in a pot of mussels, hear the cry of cicadas, feel a cat purr against your belly, or watch the hair rise on a lover's arm. 

Having devoured Little French Bistro, I tried my best to savour The Little Paris Bookshop. I failed. Once again George swept me into a French adventure, this time leaving Paris via riverways and canals to Provence. Bookshop is the bigger selling of George's books, and perhaps if I'd read it first I would understand why. I do recognize, however, that my lack of engagement with the main character Perdu comes from my own particular circumstances and is probably unfair both to him and the author. Unfortunately, to explain that statement would require a spoiler, so you'll just have to ask me about it in private. 

The theme of healing, through relationships and literature, from the inevitable bruises of life is one with which I have deep experience and deep appreciation. The bookshop in the title is called The Literary Apothecary, and Perdu sees himself as a druggist prescribing the right book for the right reader at the right time. The knowledge of both people and of books that such a job would require is remarkable - perhaps only achievable in fiction, but still highly compelling. It made me understand a little better the drive to read that I've experienced in recent months. It's not a new drive, but it has definitely grown like an unsated hunger. I get hangry for books, but the right books. And Nina George's books satisfy. How she manages to combine light and depth amazes me. Most writers make you choose between being talked down to and having your spirit assaulted. Like Anne Patchett, Nine George does neither. 

High praise and gratitude aside, Nina George's world is shockingly lacking in diversity or awareness. No people of colour, only the most tertiary of lesbianism. There are no gay men in the arts in France? No trans people in Brittany or Provence? None of France's millions of immigrants have anything to say or do (besides producing cooking smells behind closed doors) or ever enters a popular bookshop? Seems implausible. Celebrating "Christopher Columbus discovering the Americas" was jarring, anachronistic, inaccurate and out of touch. 

Still, this book was pleasing and insightful and lovely. I look forward to whatever else Nina George writes, and hope her next story includes a more representative cast of characters.