The Little Paris Bookshop

“You see, I sell books like medicine. There are books that are suitable for a million people, others only for a hundred. There are even medicines—sorry, books—that were written for one person only.”

Perdu explains his belief in The Healing Power of Literature to Max, who has demanded to know why Perdu refused to sell Night to a customer. This passage emphasizes why literature can be such a powerful tool for healing: It can be deeply personal. Perdu’s statement about books potentially being written for only one reader foreshadows his conversation with Samy, in which he tells her that he feels Southern Lights was written just for him.

“But it wouldn’t go away. The damn missing simply wouldn’t go away. He’d only been able to cope by starting to avoid life. He’d locked away the loving with the missing, deep within.”

Just as he has locked the Lavender Room in his apartment, Perdu has locked his love and longing for Manon away inside of him. His response to the grief of losing Manon was to start avoiding anything that might stir up his feelings. The novel begins as external events force Perdu to reopen and face some of those feelings.

“I see that I have grown old without noticing. How time has passed. All that damn lost time. I’m scared I’ve done something terribly stupid, Manon. I’ve grown old in a single night, and I miss you.”

Mortality is an important topic throughout the novel, as Perdu grapples with Manon’s death and his own aging. These lines, which Perdu thinks to himself, are part of the asides that appear throughout the novel, giving the reader direct access to Perdu’s thoughts.

“But I was wrong, it won’t work. I have to tell you what happened to me, to you, to us. It is both beautiful and terrible at the same time; it is too much for a short letter. We’ll talk it all over when you get here.”

Manon’s letter shows that attempting to wall off one’s emotions as a form of protection does not work. In her letter, she admits that she was wrong to try to spare Perdu’s feelings by leaving abruptly and understands that difficult experiences must be faced together. Her realization foreshadows Perdu’s realization that he can no longer wall himself off from his grief but must face it in order to heal.

“A bird awoke inside his chest, and it cautiously spread its wings, amazed to find that it was still alive. It wanted out. It wanted to burst from his chest, taking his heart with it, and soar up into the sky.”

Perdu feels free and elated when he casts off from the quay in Paris, taking Lulu downriver for the first time in decades. Perdu is amazed to discover that he feels desire for life after so many years spent avoiding it. Max’s company, although unexpected, contributes to his feeling of joy.

“She was the world breathing.”

Perdu thinks of Manon with deep love and often uses very poetic language when thinking of her. Here, Perdu recalls listening to Manon’s breath while she slept on their vacation in the countryside of Camargue. With her there, he felt wild and primal; their days were simple and dedicated to each other without distraction, and he fears he will never feel this way with anyone again.

“We cannot decide to love. We cannot compel anyone to love us. There’s no secret recipe, only love itself. And we are at its mercy—there’s nothing we can do.”

In a novel deeply interested in The Beauty and Significance of Human Connection, many of the characters express different philosophies on what love is, and about the different kinds of love that exist. Here, Perdu is attempting to comfort Max, explaining to him that it was not his fault if his father did not love him when he was a child. This is an important moment for the two characters, and an early example of their developing father–son relationship.

“If Jordan ever needed a piece of fatherly advice, Perdu would tell him: ‘Never listen to fear! Fear makes you stupid.’”

As Perdu heals, he realizes the way his grief made him fearful. As his affection for Max continues to grow, he hopes that Max will not make the same kinds of mistakes. Here, too, Perdu begins to truly embrace his father-like role in Max’s life.

“Whenever Monsieur Perdu looked at a book, he did not see it purely in terms of a story, minimum retail price and an essential balm for the soul; he saw freedom on wings of paper.”

Perdu thinks about the value of books as he collects a few to trade for supplies on their journey. He doesn’t like trading them for other material goods, but he does like sharing books with the world. His thoughts demonstrate his belief in The Healing Power of Literature. The phrase “freedom on wings of paper” is significant here, as the concept of freedom is most closely associated with Manon, as is the image of a book with wings, which is the image on the flag that Manon sewed for Lulu.

“I wish I were the light in Provence when the sun goes down. Then I could be everywhere, in every living thing. It would be who I am, and no one would hate me for it.”

Manon is a passionate, lively character. She craves the most out of life, including the love of multiple men. In her diary on her way home to Bonnieux after several months in Paris, she wishes to be light so that she would not be limited in her experiences or in her love. The motif of light is closely associated with Manon throughout the novel.

“I need to be with Jean because he’s the male part of me. We look at each other and see the same thing. Luc is the man whom I stand beside, and we look in the same direction.”

Manon attempts to describe the different relationships that she has with the two men in her life. This diary entry aids the reader in understanding how important both men are to Manon and the unique role that each plays in her life, something that Perdu will not understand for himself until he reads her diary.

“He remembered that he had felt the same about the scent of lavender as a young man, even before he had met Manon. A shock wave. As though his heart knew even then that at some point far in the future this scent would be associated with longing. With pain. With love. With a woman.”

Manon loved lavender, having grown up in the South of France where it is abundant. Perdu associates the smell of lavender with Manon and reflects that he had a powerful affinity for that scent even before he knew her. This passage emphasizes the potency of sensory experiences to stir up emotion and memory, a topic that recurs throughout the novel.

“To carry them within us—that is our task. We carry them all inside us, all our dead and shattered loves. Only they make us whole. If we begin to forget or cast aside those we’ve lost, then…then we are no longer present either.”

Perdu has an epiphany after he reveals to Max and Cuneo that Manon is dead. This is an important moment in his healing journey, as he realizes that part of The Impact of Loss and Grief is honoring the memory of loved ones and allowing those memories to influence the future. This breakthrough takes Perdu one step closer to the conclusion of his journey at Manon’s grave in Bonnieux.

“[H]e had found beneath the sorrow a place where emotion and happiness could live alongside tenderness and the realization that he was lovable after all.”

Prior to the events of the novel, Perdu had shut himself off from life, avoiding making friends or having new experiences. Through his time spent on the boat with Max and Cuneo, Perdu discovers that he can feel sorrow without it preventing him from feeling other emotions too.

“Both of you, Luc and Jean, husband and lover, south and north, love and sex, earth and sky, body and spirit, country and city. You are the two things I need to be whole.”

Luc and Perdu are foils in Manon’s life and in the novel. They each offer Manon things that the other cannot. This passage is a strong example of the figurative language that the author uses when Manon or Perdu is writing about love.

“He was afraid that he was destined to mourn over and over for people he loved. How should he endure that for the rest of his life? How could anyone endure it?”

Fear is one of the side-effects of grief that the novel explores. Even this late in the novel, Perdu still grapples with his fear of starting a new relationship with Catherine, worried that he will be caught forever in a cycle of mourning. Perdu finds that swimming eases his fear and sadness until he trusts himself not to get lost in his emotions.

“Most often he asked, ‘How should the book taste? Of ice cream? Spicy, meaty? Or like a chilled rosé?’ Food and books were closely related. He discovered this in Sanary, and it earned him the nickname ‘the book epicure.’”

The novel celebrates the joy of sensory experiences—things like a delicious meal or a peaceful swim or a beautiful sunset—as one of the highlights of living a full life. While Perdu is in Sanary, his process for prescribing books shifts to represent his new-found joy in such sensory pleasures as food. Food is closely associated with both Cuneo and Catherine, new relationships that Perdu forms during his healing journey.

“Books can do many things, but not everything. We have to live the important things, not read them. I have to…experience my book.”

Demonstrating his transformation as a character, Perdu expresses a new opinion on books: that they are great, but that they can’t stand in for living life. This is a big change from his perspective at the start of the novel, when books were his entire life.

“Sanary stood for happiness, peace, and quiet; it stood for the first stirrings of empathy with someone who was a stranger, someone you loved without being able to say why.”

Sanary is an important setting in the novel and is the last stage on Perdu’s journey before he ends at his original destination of Manon’s family home in Bonnieux. Sanary is where Perdu and Catherine first kiss and spend quality time alone together.

“You’re searching for me. I’m no longer in the sealed rooms, of course. Look at me! Out here. Raise your eyes, I’m here! Think of me and call my name! none of this is any less real because I am gone. Death doesn’t matter. It makes no difference to life. We will always remain what we were to one another.”

These lines are near the end of Manon’s final diary entry, written as she lies dying. She imagines that, after dying, she will become light, and Luc and Perdu will find her by looking up at the sky. The last line is a phrase that she’s said to Perdu, and the phrase is written on her gravestone.

“He had had no idea how much he had meant to Manon. He used to long for it to be so, but only now that he had made peace with himself and was newly in love did he learn the truth. And it healed old wounds.”

Perdu reflects on Manon’s diary, which finally shows him that she loved him deeply. Manon wanted Perdu to know that she loved him, but he never received her invitation to see her one last time, as it was in the letter that he left unopened. He realizes that by being too angry to read the letter, he robbed himself of knowing how much Manon really cared for him.

“Manon’s soul, Manon’s energy, Manon’s whole disembodied essence filled the land and the wind; yes, she was everywhere and in everything; she sparkled and manifested herself to him in every form she had ever taken on.”

The motif of light recurs throughout the novel, and is associated with Manon as well as with the theme of The Beauty and Significance of Human Connection. At Manon’s grave, Perdu does not feel her presence until he sits down to watch the sunset. In the magnificent sunset, he feels her presence and finds peace in thinking that she’s everywhere because he carries memories of her.

“It was the second time they had eaten the thirteen desserts together on Christmas Eve, laying three extra places for the dead, for the living and for good fortune in the year to come.”

Perdu’s love for Manon brings their extended families together, more than 20 years after her death. In her honor, they all gather to eat traditional Christmas Eve desserts, which was Manon’s choice for her final meal.