There you are, a booklover in Paris, walking the streets on a crisp day in autumn. To your delight, you've read there's a new bookstore recently opened, one specializing in fine literary novels from around the world. You know the address and you look forward to an enjoyable visit to The Good Novel.
For avid readers of excellent literature, such a bookstore would be a dream come true. If you are nodding your head in agreement, then A Novel Bookstore is for you. Really for you. Laurence Cossé's novel is a tribute to what it means to be a lover of quality fiction - not only reading such books but having every aspect of you inner and outer life touched by your reading. Europa Editions is to be commended for publishing a beautiful edition of the French author's 400-page novel translated into a smooth, eminently readable English by Alison Anderson.
A Novel Bookstore is a charming tale, in turn moving and inspiring - and so very French. By way of anecdote and intimate personal fine points, we come to know the backstory of a pair of bibliophiles - scruffy Ivan (called Van) and aristocratic Francesca and their vision of opening a unique Paris bookstore. As part of their plan, they assemble a secret committee of eight authors (identities known only by Van and Francesca) and ask each writer to list 600 novels to be stocked on their shelves. But then the unexpected: following the rousing success of the opening of their store, several committee members are attacked by unknown assailants (Laurence Cossé actually begins her novel by chronicling the attacks). Van and Francesca request a meeting with an Inspector Heffner who also so happens to be an appreciator of good books.
However, I'll shift from unfolding mystery and other subplots like Van falling in love with young bibliophile Anis to the heartbeat of A Novel Bookstore: good novels and the reading of novels - exactly the reason the vast majority of readers, myself included, have been drawn to this work in the first place.
One of the joys of reading A Novel Bookstore is listening in as fellow booklovers talk about books and writers. Case in point: Anis is reading Rapport aux bêtes by Noëlle Revaz, a novel Ivan thinks very highly of. The more Anis reads, the more and more enthralled she becomes. I've never heard of this Swiss author. I looked up what books of hers are available in English. One novel in particular caught my attention - Efina, about an obsessive love affair and exchange of letters between an aging actor and young theatergoer where their emotions bounce back and forth between attraction and repulsion. I'll be making this novel part of my personal library: I plan to read and review.
Swiss novelist Noëlle Revaz, born 1968
Likewise with Pierre Michon, also new to me, listed along with Patrick Modiano, Michel Rio, Christian Gailly and twenty-six other contemporary French authors that Francesca especially loves. I look forward to my reading and reviewing Michon's The Origin of the World, a short novel set in a sleepy French village probing the secret recesses of desire between a visiting young teacher and a stunningly attractive young lady with irresistible charms.
The success of The Good Novel exceeds all expectations. On opening day they sell 500 novels. FIVE HUNDRED! Readers proclaim: "At last! At last a bookstore where only superb novels are to be found. At last a real choice. At last you can be sure you won't be disappointed." Many of the book buyers become regulars. Customers act like associates and recommend some of their favorite novels and novelists deserving a place in The Good Novel.
As I was reading this section, I reflected on some of my own favorites not mentioned and deserving inclusion: Hygiene and the Assassin by Amélie Nothomb, The Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin, Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing. I could go on and on. When you click into the novel's vibe, I'm sure you will mentally compose your own list.
French novelist Pierre Michon, born 1945
As to be expected, The Good Novel has its naysayers. - journalists, critics, other booksellers, even some authors. Francesca and Van fire back with words eloquent and stirring:
"For as long as literature has existed, suffering, joy, horror, grace, and everything that is great in humankind has produced great novels.
"But those masterful novels are life-giving. They enchant us. They help us to live. They teach us. It has become necessary to come to their defense and promote them relentlessly, because it is an illusion to think that they have the power to radiate all by themselves. That along is our ambition.
"We want books that are written for those of us who doubt everything, who cry over the least little thing, who are startled by the slightest noise.
"We want books that cost their authors a great deal, books where you can feel the years of work, the backache, the writer's block, the author's panic at the thought that he might be lost: his discouragement, his courage, his anguish, his stubbornness, the risk of failure that he has taken.
"We want splendid books, books that immerse us in the splendor of reality and keep us there; books that prove to us that love is at work in the world next to evil, right up against it, at times indistinctly, and that it always will be, just the way that suffering will always ravage hearts. We want good novels."
Recall I mentioned back there how, for a true booklover, a novel can touch every aspect of one's inner and outer life. Nobody knows the truth of this statement better than Francesca who found great support in books following the suicide of her teenage daughter.
Of course, while reading A Novel Bookstore you will surely see not everything that transpires is entirely realistic. But that's hardly the point. Laurence Cossé has written a novel about a love and passion enriching the lives of many sensitive, intelligent women, men and children across the globe. If you have made it to the end of my review, I strongly suspect you are among their number.
French author Laurence Cossé, born 1950
“Literature is a source of pleasure, he said, it is one of the rare inexhaustible joys in life, but it's not only that. It must not be disassociated from reality. Everything is there. That is why I never use the word fiction. Every subtlety in life is material for a book. He insisted on the fact. Have you noticed, he'd say, that I'm talking about novels? Novels don't contain only exceptional situations, life or death choices, or major ordeals; there are also everyday difficulties, temptations, ordinary disappointments; and, in response, every human attitude, every type of behavior, from the finest to the most wretched. There are books where, as you read, you wonder: What would I have done? It's a question you have to ask yourself. Listen carefully: it is a way to learn to live. There are grown-ups who would say no, that literature is not life, that novels teach you nothing. They are wrong. Literature performs, instructs, it prepares you for life.”
― Laurence Cossé, A Novel Bookstore
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