In Nina George’s New York Times bestseller The Little Paris Bookshop, beloved literary apothecary Jean Perdu is inspired to create a floating bookstore after reading a seminal pseudonymous novel about a young woman with a remarkable gift. The Little Village of Book Lovers is that novel.
“Everyone knows me, but none can see me. I’m that thing you call love.”
In a little town in the south of France in the 1960s, a dazzling encounter with Love itself changes the life of infant orphan Marie-Jeanne forever.
As a girl, Marie-Jeanne realises that she can see the marks Love has left on the people around her – tiny glowing lights on the faces and hands that shimmer more brightly when the one meant for them is near. Before long, Marie-Jeanne is playing matchmaker, bringing true loves together in her village.
As she grows up, Marie-Jeanne helps her foster father, Francis, begin a mobile library that travels throughout the many small mountain towns in the region of Nyons. Their library will offer entertainment, guidance, reassurance and comfort – balm for the heartbroken and lonely. Marie-Jeanne soon finds herself bringing soulmates together everywhere they go, with books always playing an essential part in her quest.
However, the only person that Marie-Jeanne can’t seem to find a soulmate for is herself. She has no glow of her own, though she waits and waits for it to appear. Everyone must have a soulmate, surely – but will Marie-Jeanne be able to recognize hers when Love finally comes her way?
Returning to Jean Perdu’s beautiful literary apothecary, where he’s spent many years prescribing just the right book to his customers, we now come to discover the novel that has been most important to his own life.
Like its predecessor, The Little French Village of Book Lovers has magic on every page. What a beautiful notion to write a novel narrated by Love itself, as it shares with us its insights and powers as well as its relationship with its siblings, pride, logic, fate and death.
The Little French Village of Book Lovers is effortlessly charming and infinitely readable. Though set in the 60s, it possesses a sense of life outside of time, as all good fables do. Our protagonist – an Amelie meets Pollyanna heroine of the heart – Marie-Jeanne, is orphaned from an early age, and is in possession of being loved by Love itself. This in turn provides her with the gift of seeing the glow of love on the people around her.
It’s a swoonworthy, joyous, funny and delightful read as we travel with Marie-Jeanne, her adorable foster father Francis, the bric-a-brac dealer and her gruff, though devoted, foster mother Elsa.
At its heart this is a tale of love, the many manifestations of it, the roads it takes and its ongoing relationship with its peers. The sense of place is perfect as George takes us to the lavender fields of the Provence. You can feel the sunshine in every line, see the olive trees, and most certainly smell the lavender as you inhale the uplifting and joyous whimsy.
Reading The Little French Village of Book Lovers makes you feel like you’re on holiday. I challenge anyone not to fall in love with this novel. I certainly did.
Buy a copy of The Little French Village of Book Lovers here.
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