Many contrasts are drawn relating to Paris and the US in this historical fiction set between the World Wars. THE PARIS BOOKSELLER is Sylvia Beach, an American woman who travels to France, which is slowly recovering from the Great War. This actual literary figure ran a bookstore and a publishing house, but she only produced one book.
Meeting Adrienne Monnier, a bookshop owner and artist, Sylvia starts a gentle love affair which she would not have been allowed to pursue in her home country. This explains why she stays in Paris, where same-sex relationships are accepted legally and socially. She opens her shop, Shakespeare and Company, to catch the English-speaking trade in 1919. Many writers start appearing here, some, like Ernest Hemingway, showing off their war wounds. His (first) wife Hadley is with him. The Irish writer James Joyce and his common-law wife Nora Barnacle became frequent visitors. Joyce’s novel Ulysses has been banned, after chapters were serialised in a magazine. This partial printing was a common practice as it gave authors money to go on with, and drummed up interest in the eventual book, besides selling magazines. Joyce hasn’t even completed his work and it’s banned already. But not in France.
Other famous persons we meet are Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, all young and bright and happy. It is hard for us to think of them living that way, as we were obliged to study them from the distance of time, living in the early part of the last century. Eavesdropping on the literary salon parties will be enjoyed by English Lit students everywhere. The publication of full-length Ulysses in 1922 occupied Sylvia for years. It costs her money rather than making money. Smuggling copies from Canada into the US, fighting pirated editions and waiting for half-blind Joyce ever to complete another book (Finnegans Wake came out in 1939) quite explains why she stopped with one.
The latter half of the story seems to be full of detail about the awkward politics around censorship, piracy and legal or financial issues in different countries. The first half is the most fun. Life is changing for Parisians in the late 1930s of course, and I thought we could have seen more of that to snap the reader back into drama. But Kerri Maher is winding down at that point, having told the story she wanted to tell in THE PARIS BOOKSELLER. I learned a great deal and would feel confident discussing the characters and the period, so this could be a valuable read for students and historians, as well as those interested in a sapphic romance.
When bookish young American Sylvia Beach opens Shakespeare and Company on a quiet street in Paris in 1919, she has no idea that she and her new bookstore will change the course of literature itself.
Shakespeare and Company is more than a bookstore and lending library: Many of the prominent writers of the Lost Generation, like Ernest Hemingway, consider it a second home. It's where some of the most important literary friendships of the twentieth century are forged—none more so than the one between Irish writer James Joyce and Sylvia herself. When Joyce's controversial novel Ulysses is banned, Beach takes a massive risk and publishes it under the auspices of Shakespeare and Company.
But the success and notoriety of publishing the most infamous and influential book of the century comes with steep costs. The future of her beloved store itself is threatened when Ulysses' success brings other publishers to woo Joyce away. Her most cherished relationships are put to the test as Paris is plunged deeper into the Depression and many expatriate friends return to America. As she faces painful personal and financial crises, Sylvia—a woman who has made it her mission to honor the life-changing impact of books—must decide what Shakespeare and Company truly means to her.
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