The Little Village of Book Lovers

I love books and France, so reading about either of those is usually a joy. This drew me to the new Nina George novel, The Little Village of Book Lovers, a companion piece to her bestseller, The Little Paris Bookshop. I haven’t read that earlier book, but this new publication works as a standalone.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Summary

When Marie-Jeanne was orphaned as a baby, she gained an unusual skill: She can see the glow of love on other people and find where that light leads. But she herself has no such glow. As a child, Marie-Jeanne and her adoptive father Francis set up a mobile library, loaning out books in their village in the south of France. Soon all the inhabitants are avid readers. Meanwhile, Marie-Jeanne is trying to understand her gift and what to do with it. She could play matchmaker… but will she ever be able to find a love of her own?

Review

The Little Village of Book Lovers is a whimsical piece of magical realism set in southern France in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It’s narrated by Love (other characters mentioned include Fate, Logic, and Chaos), but follows a group of people living in a small village in Nyons. Marie-Jeanne has the gift of being able to see love in the form of “southern lights” on people’s bodies, but she has no such light of her own. While she can set others up with their soul mates, she, sadly, will never find her own love.

In the first half of the book, the main focus is on Marie-Jeanne’s dad, Francis, as he spreads a love of reading throughout their village. Previously suspicious of books, all the inhabitants soon become avid readers and discuss the many classic novels they all regularly read. This is how we meet a wide cast of characters around town, many of them single and pining for love.

The second half of the book focuses more on finding your soul mate and opening up your heart to love. This is where Marie-Jeanne steps in, helping nudge people in the right direction of their one true love. Even so, she wishes she could be one of those people finding her own soul mate.

The Little Village of Book Lovers is a sort of parable, and between its main plot, it’s also filled in with numerous asides about various characters and themes. It’s charming, but this format is part of what prevented me from fully connecting with the story overall. While it’s a quick and easy read, it feels very surface level. It’s somehow both warm and rather distant from the characters. Even the many mentions of well-known books were nice, but not enough to hold my interest.

One oddity that rubbed me the wrong way: There’s only one queer character here, but for some reason she’s the only one who a) doesn’t get to find love (as her soul mate died many years ago) and b) insists that she doesn’t want love in the form of physical intimacy. Why is she singled out like this? It feels homophobic?

In any case, one early line in the novel that stood out to me is this: “If love is the poetry of the senses, books are the poetry of the impossible.”

Final Thoughts

The Little Village of Book Lovers is a cute and fanciful novel, but I don’t think I was the right audience for it. The writing style isn’t to my taste, but might appeal to fans of magical realism and books with wider casts of characters.

Get the Book

You can buy The Little Village of Book Lovers here – it’s available as a hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

The Little Village of Book Lovers by Nina George
Translator	Simon Pare
Audience	Adult
Genre	Historical Fiction; Magical Realism
Setting	France
Number of Pages	272
Format I Read	ebook (NetGalley)
Original Publication Date	July 25, 2023 (English translation)

Official Summary

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?

About the Author

Credit: Helmut Henkensiefken

Nina George is the author of The Little Paris Bookshop, The Little French Bistro, and The Book of Dreams. The Little Paris Bookshop spent more than forty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into thirty-six languages. George is president of the European Writers’ Council. She is married to the writer Jens J. Kramer. Together they also write mystery novels and children’s books. Nina George lives in Berlin and in a little fishing village in the Brittany.