Synopsis

THE PARIS BOOKSELLER opens in 1917, as World War I ends and Paris is alive as a thriving center for culture and modernity. With new ideas rapidly taking the post-war world by storm, Sylvia Beach moves to Paris and opens the doors to her new English-language bookshop with the help of fellow writer and bookseller Adrienne Monnier. What starts as a partnership and friendship with Adrienne soon blossoms into a romance, and the women work together to create a haven for English writers and readers.

Sylvia quickly falls in love with James Joyce’s prose, especially his unpublished manuscript, Ulysses. When the contentious novel is banned in the United States for its obscenity, Sylvia takes a massive financial and personal risk, deciding to publish it under the auspices of Shakespeare and Company. She quickly realizes that the success and notoriety of publishing the most influential book of the century comes with steep costs. While many patrons applaud her efforts, some believe she has marred the integrity of Shakespeare and Company as she remains staunchly loyal to Joyce. Even worse, the future of her beloved store is threatened and her most enduring friendships are put to the test when Ulysses’ success leads to Joyce being wooed by other publishers. Now on the cusp of World War II and facing financial ruin, Sylvia must decide how far she will go to keep Shakespeare and Company alive.

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Review

This is the kind of book that can send you down a rabbit hole to learn more about the characters!

I love when I can learn new things about our past! While this book is fictionalized, it is based on some real-life people including bookshop owner and publisher Sylvia Beach, author James Joyce, and many many more. Set primarily in the 20s and 30s, this is a look into Sylvia’s life opening a bookstore and deciding that Ulysses by James Joyce needed to be published and since America was banning the book as obscene, it needed to be published in Europe. Imagine typing up the book from someone’s handwriting, that could be treacherous work and it was in one case where the husband came home and burned the pages because he considered it scandalous. Needless to say, that caused quite a pickle since there was not a way to recreate the chapter…or was there?

I have to admit, when I first started reading the book it was hard to get into and I’m not sure why. It might have felt a little high brow, but as I settled into the characters and their lives, I became immersed in the lives of the artists, how Sylvia was doing with her bookstore, her life with her lover Adrienne, and a little family drama thrown in to boot. I have to admit to searching online for Sylvia Beach and her life and accomplishments. I love that she jumped right in and started her store, primarily for ex-pats living in Paris, but it because a meeting place for writers, musicians, poets, and more.

James Joyce was a mess in this book. I don’t know if this is how he was in real life, but I have to imagine it is loosely based on the truth. He might have had a brilliant mind, but he was hard to deal with on many fronts and it cost Sylvia nearly everything.

This well-researched book will have you dreaming of Paris and the life that was available to many in the early 1900s compared to other countries. The glimpses of well know authors had me wondering what that life must have been like, to meet such great minds before they were just that.

Overall, we give this 4 paws up and will be looking for more books by this author.

About the Author

Kerri Maher is the author of The Girl in White Gloves, The Kennedy Debutante, and, under the name Kerri Majors, This is Not a Writing Manual: Notes for the Young Writer in the Real World. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and was a writing professor for many years. She now writes full-time and lives with her daughter and dog in a leafy suburb west of Boston, Massachusetts.

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