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
