The Little Paris Bookshop

For The Love Of Books

The idea of Nina George’s The Little Paris Bookshop (translated by Simon Pare from the original German Das Lavendelzimmer) is magical, the book not so much. How the reader takes the sentimental story of loss, grief and rediscovery of love depends on his/her temperament and current frame of mind;  the international bestseller could enchant just as much as it could annoy.

The protagonist is a sad, buttoned-up man called Jean Perdu, who had lost the love of his life, Manon, some twenty years ago, and has shut himself off emotionally since.  He runs a bookshop in a barge on the Seine, and calls it the Literary Apothecary, because he believes he can solve people’s problems by ‘prescribing’ the right book for them to read.

As he explains in the book, “ "I wanted to treat feelings that are not recognized as afflictions and are never diagnosed by doctors. All those little feelings and emotions no therapist is interested in, because they are apparently too minor and intangible. The feeling that washes over you when another summer nears its end Or when you recognize that you haven't got your whole life left to find out where you belong. Or the slight sense of grief when a friendship doesn't develop as you thought, and you have to continue your search for a lifelong companion. Or those birthday morning blues. Nostalgia for the air of your childhood. Things like that." 

His placid life is turned upside down when a new neighbor, Catherine, with traumas of her own, discovers an unopened letter in a table he gave her (because she has no furniture, only “shattered illusions”). Reading the letter leads him to lifting anchor and setting off on a journey down the river, accompanied by his two cats (Kafka and Lindgren) and a successful young writer Max Jordan, who wants to escape crazy female fans (really!) and seek inspiration for a new book.  At the back of Perdu’s mind is also the search for a mysterious poet whose work had a deep impact on him.

On the unplanned journey, they meet interesting people, go to a town that has only books at its centre, and, well, life changes for the better. The landscapes they pass through are breathtaking, the food one of their guests cooks on the barge is divine…it wouldn’t be a spoiler to say that Perdu does find the poet and everybody finds love in a fairytale-like happily ever after ending.

Perdu’s adventures are punctuated with entries from Manon’s diaries, which give hints and finally reveals, why she upped and left him

The translation tends to make the book sound stilted, but if the story of repairing broken hearts and beating melancholy through books appeals, then this one is charming and feel-good, and studded with words of wisdom.  (“The trouble is that so many people, most of them women, think they have to have a perfect body to be loved. But all it has to do is be capable of loving – and being loved.”) Still, it is often contrived and much too sweet, so that it feels like a meal of only gooey dessert.

The best thing about the book ( reminiscent of The Collected Works of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin) is that it has a list of Provencal recipes at the end and also some delightful prescriptions from Jean Perdu’s Emergency Literary Pharmacy—that is, books to uplift the soul. Of these, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery is heartily recommended.

The Little Paris Bookshop

by Nina George

Published by Crown

Pages: 392

The Melody Lingers On

Follow The Money

Mary Higgins Clark is the grande dame of suspense--the author of more than 50 novels and at 87, she is still writing.

Regular readers say her latest The Melody Lingers On is not one of her better ones, but she has picked a contemporary subject and added a dash of romance to it.

Parker Bennett was a financial wiz, who made billions from the investments of middle-class people. When he was reported dead in a sailing accident, hundreds of families lost their savings, some their homes and retirement funds.

The circumstances of his accident were mysterious and his body was never found, giving rise to the suspicion that he had faked his death and vanished with a fortune. Bennett’s wife Anne and son Eric suffer the consequences of his crime. The FBI are still investigating Bennett’s disappearance.

 Elaine "Lane" Harmon works for Glady Harper, a snooty interior decorator.  Lane is given the assignment of doing up Anne Bennet’s townhouse, where she has to move after giving up her luxurious mansion. Lane and Eric are attracted to each other, and when he tells her he had nothing to do with his father’s fraud, she believes him.

While their relationship grows, detectives work hard on the case, a man called Ranger, who lost his wife because of Parker Bennett is obsessed with revenge and a social climbing Countess knows more than she lets on.

The plot had more potential than Clark is able to get out of it, and there is some lazy plotting here—would a really smart crook leave important information on a piece of paper in his wallet, for instance, or leave the number of his secret account taped on a toy rather than memorizing it?

Lane Harmon is not a very interesting heroine either and has little to do with how the plot develops—in fact she comes across as a self-centered fool when she refuses to help the FBI.

There is very little suspense and the tone more chick-lit (Glady Harper is right out of The Devil Wears Prada) than thriller, but it’s a quick and enjoyable read.

The Melody Lingers On

By Mary Higgins Clark

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages:  320

My Secret Rockstar Boyfriend

Gal Zone

My Secret Rockstar Boyfriend would probably appeal to tweens—it has been written in a sassy conversational style and has many passages that are blogs and email exchanges.

Tuesday “Chew” Cooper is a nerdy eighteen year old, into retro pop, vintage clothes and blogging about music. She has a lesbian best friend (called Nishi, if you please) a rocker boyfriend Seymour, a cool mother and worries about exams.

Then Jackson Griffith, former pop star starts chatting with her online, since she is a fan. He invites her to the Glastonbury music festival and she throws caution to the winds and goes. At the festival she meets all kinds of people, and does some growing up.  A fun read for youngsters.

My Secret Rockstar Boyfriend

By Eleanor Wood

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Pages: 320

The Devotion of Suspect X

Killer Love

The release of  Drishyam (in its many versions), raised curiosity about the Japanese film that ostensibly inspired it.

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino, is not new (it came out in 2011), but its bestseller status (two million copies and counting) that reportedly made it a "national obsession" and of course the films, made one pick it up. Higashino is a hugely popular writer of thrillers in Japan, and has written more books in his Inspector Galileo series.

Galileo is not a cop at all, but a scientist named Manabu Yukawa, who, with his irrefutable logic, helps his schoolmate and buddy Inspector Kusanagi with his cases. The one they have been puzzling over involves the murder of a man called Togashi; the chief suspect is his ex-wife Yasuko, but she has a watertight alibi for herself and her school going daughter Misato.  The cop’s hunch says she is involved with the murder, and, as it happens, she is the killer.

The reader knows that soon into the book, that the single mother, working at a food shop was forced to kill her vicious ex-husband, when he traced her to her new workplace and home, to extort money from her. When Misato sees him attack her mother, she hits him on the head. Then, to save her daughter from being killed by her stepfather, Yasuko strangles him.

Ordinarily, a woman in this situation would call the cops and plead self-defence.  But Yasuko’s neighbor,  the quiet and intense mathematics teacher, Ishigami, turns up at the door and offers to take care of the problem.  ("Trust me," he says. "Logical thinking will get us through this.")  Perhaps, what is lost in translation is the Japanese cops’ unsympathetic attitude towards women, or there’s no reason for Yasuko to get embroiled in the cover up of the murder.

What she doesn’t know is that Ishigami is a mathematical genius, and in love with her. Every day he goes to her workplace to buy his lunch, but actually, only to see her. He has not been able to express his feelings to her, because he is painfully shy and not attractive looking.

The town’s cops are unusually thorough and grill everybody even remotely connected to the case. But they can’t pin anything on Yasuko and Misato because their alibi holds. Every evening, Ishigami calls Yasuko from a public phone and gives her instructions. Later, he leaves detailed commands in her mail box.

Kusanagi approaches his friend Yukawa, who knows Ishigami from school and is also aware of his extraordinary brain. He is certain that Ishigami is somehow responsible for saving Yasuko’s skin.  Without much being said, the two geniuses seem to read each other’s minds, and Ishigami knows that Yukawa knows. However, till the very end, neither Yukawa nor the reader know just how big a sacrifice Ishigami has made to protect the woman he loves, even though he is aware of her attraction towards another suitor.

The plot is complicated but far less contrived than Drishyam.  Higashino weaves a delicate web of romance and suspense with simple prose—not a sentence extra, not a word out of place.  Not in the league of American or Scandinavian police procedurals and murder mysteries, but a satisfying read, nonetheless.

The Devotion Of Suspect X

by Keigo Higashino

Translated from the Japanese by Alexander O. Smith with Elye J. Alexander

Published by Minotaur.

Pages:  298