The Little Village of Book Lovers
A Novel
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4.1 • 30 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A young woman with the extraordinary power to bring soulmates together searches for her own true love in this tender, lyrical standalone novel inspired by the “bona fide international hit” (The New York Times Book Review) The Little Paris Bookshop
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 realizes 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. She finds herself bringing soulmates together every place they go—and there are always books that play a pivotal role in that 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?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
George offers an appealing companion piece to The Little Paris Bookshop, featuring a bookseller in the South of France with a magical ability. Marie-Jeanne Claudel, an orphan, is adopted as an infant in 1958 by Elsa Malbec and Francis Meurienne, a middle-aged couple in Nyons. At nine, Marie-Jeanne notices a glow on her friends Loulou and Luca and realizes it's because they love each other, though they're oblivious and constantly bicker. Then, over Elsa's objections, after Marie-Jeanne turns 10, she helps Francis launch the Philis Mobile Library, delivering books throughout the week to nearby towns. George then fast-forwards to the 1980s, with Marie-Jeanne running her own bookstore, Lumières du Sud, a few hours from Nyons, which becomes a place where people meet and fall in love, thanks to a nudge from Marie-Jeanne. A parallel narrative follows Elsa and Francis, who finally discover passion after joining a book group together when Marie-Jeanne is a teen, and Loulou and Luca, now married, whose twin daughters also adore books. The prose is simplistic (young Marie-Jeanne initially finds Waiting for Godot "rude," but eventually realizes, "books sometimes don't say what they say but instead contain a hidden message"). Still, George convincingly portrays her characters' emotions, particularly the lovesick Francis. The result is a bit more straightforward than the books Marie-Jeanne comes to love, but charming nonetheless.
