There's a special category of books that appeal most strongly to people who just plain love to read. Not thrillers, or mysteries, or traditional romances, they are instead love letters to books themselves and to the power and delight of the written word and of stories. Books like Gabrielle Zevin's THE STORIED LIFE OF A. J. FIKRY or Robin Sloan's MR. PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE fit the bill. Now joining the ranks of those books you just have to give to the bibliophiles in your life is THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP by Nina George, about a man who knows how to match the perfect book to its perfect reader but who can't seem to make meaningful matches in his own life.

For the last 20 years, Jean Perdu has been the captain of a floating bookshop in Paris, a so-called literary apothecary where the proprietor can readily diagnose any psychological ills of the hapless readers who board the book barge and efficiently prescribe just the right book or books to address the ailment. If a reader is in search of levity after the loss of a friend or consolation in the wake of a bad breakup, Monsieur Perdu has just the thing.

"THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP is the kind of book that readers might not know they needed or wanted until they picked it up --- meaning that George herself is doing exactly the same kind of work as Jean Perdu on his floating literary apothecary."

Secretly, though, Perdu is nursing his own ailment, his own story of lost love that no amount of literature can quite remedy. Years ago, he loved and lost a woman, Manon, and since then his own heart has been locked away, even as he's probed the hearts of countless strangers on his book barge. When, however, a lonely and alluring stranger moves into Perdu's apartment building and helps him discover a long-buried secret about Manon, Perdu is both terrified by his new feelings and chastened by his decades-old emotional paralysis that seems even more of a waste in light of this new information.

Accompanied by a literary wunderkind who is suffering his own kind of paralysis, Perdu flees Paris and sets off on a pilgrimage by canal and by land, south of Paris and into Provence, Manon's home region. Along the way, the travelers encounter other lost souls in search of connection, people whose own stories reflect and illuminate Perdu's personal tragedy and who might enable him to find hope and healing.

At times, George's novel can be surprising or even frustrating; the pacing sometimes seems as slow as a sluggish canal and the plot nearly as meandering. Readers who, by virtue of the book’s title, hope for a lot of scenes of Paris and of the titular bookshop may find themselves momentarily disappointed. However, the scenes of rural France and its inhabitants' eccentricities and passions soon make up for any initial shortfall of expectations. George's satisfyingly romantic novel also includes recipes and an annotated bibliography of literary prescriptions.

Most notably, though, THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP is the kind of book that readers might not know they needed or wanted until they picked it up --- meaning that George herself is doing exactly the same kind of work as Jean Perdu on his floating literary apothecary.