Jean Perdu's floating bookshop sits on the Seine as he prescribes books to readers as if they are medicine for the soul. Nina George's The Little Paris Bookshop was medicine for my soul. This book could not have fallen into my lap at a better time. A gorgeous story about an old man who let life pass him by because of a lost love. It was as if Jean Perdu himself had looked me and said "This one. Read this one next." This book was beautifully written, with colorful characters and a story that makes you laugh and cry in the same chapter, and was the perfect book to remind me that you can't give up just because you've gotten a raw deal. When life gives you lemons, go find a book that tells you every possible thing you can do with lemons. As if it wasn't already wonderful, George lists a variety of books and what they should be used for as "medicine" for readers AND she provides the recipes for meals cooked in the book. Well done Nina, well done.
If the only premise of this book had been an adorable older man selling books as medicine for all of life's ailments, I would have been one happy book reviewer. But then send him on a quest to understand events that happened 20 years ago and to give him closure on those events? Excuse me while I aggressively stalk Nina George on GoodReads to see what else she's written and if she's in the works to write anything else.
Courtesy of Blogging for Books
