Books for When Your Brain Is Melted
Consider these novels as the literary
equivalent of a spa day: lie back, relax and drift away.
1 of 4
The Little Paris Bookshop
By Nina George
416 pages;
Broadway Books
If
you're looking to be charmed right out of your own life for a few hours, sit
down with this wise and winsome novel. Jean Perdu (his last name translates as
“lost”) runs a floating “literary apothecary” in a boat moored on the Seine,
where he prescribes each of his customers the perfect book for whatever ails
them. (“Books keep stupidity at bay. And
vain hopes. And vain men.”) Alas, poor Jean himself is desolate, having never
recovered from a love affair that ended more than 20 years earlier. He lives
alone in a Paris apartment building filled with oddballs, including a brilliant
pianist who can’t abide an audience and 21-year-old Max Jordan, a literary
sensation who wears earmuffs all day long and is hopelessly blocked. When
Catherine, a jilted wife, moves into one of the flats, she discovers a decades-old
letter meant for him. That letter not only unleashes a flood of emotions but
also sends him on a journey of self-discovery—literally. M. Perdu unmoors his
boat and, with Max as his charmingly inept companion, heads toward the South of
France to face his past, all the while writing to Catherine. Everything happens
just as you want it to in this novel, from poignant moments to crystalline
insights in exactly the right measure.
— Dawn Raffel
Published 07/31/2015