Who are the main characters in The Paris Bookseller ?
Do we like everyone?
In The Paris Bookseller, novelist Kerri Maher tells the story of how Shakespeare and Company came to be. Soon after returning to Paris, where she lived with her family as a teen, American Sylvia meets Parisian Adrienne Monnier, who runs a bookshop on the Left Bank.
Yes! isn't it such a fated meeting! Without Adrienne there might not have been Shakespeare and Co!
Yes! isn't it such a fated meeting! Without Adrienne there might not have been Shakespeare and Co!
Exactly!!!
I also just absolutely appreciated getting to know James Joyce! I have always completely been intimidated to read Ulysses, and now I know it was once considered smut and that it was published by Shakespeare and Co...well I am intrigued! It was also a fantastic insight into the writing process and seeing James Joyce as insecure and how much he sacrificed to write Ulysses!!! How could I not read it! Although all I've done so far is borrow it from the library, but Ulysses wasn't written in a day (or even years..)
Have you read any James Joyce? Should I do it?
Wasn't it fantastic to see the inner life of Sylvia Beach! I know obviously that it's a fictional biography, but I was looking at pictures after I finished reading The Paris Bookseller thinking yeah she absolutely was thinking.. you can tell she's about to..man how well did Kerri Maher capture...I loved it!
And isn't the genre of fictional biography such a great one, instead of just having learnt the facts, you've actually spent real time getting to know the character and their lives. It makes it so much easier to remember that Hemingway came to Paris after the Fitzgeralds because I remember Sylvia talking him through his jealousies and envy.. and that Sylvia would have rather painted over Shakespeare and Co and hide the books than give it to the Nazis, I know now that was Ernest Hemingway's idea...SO COOL!!!
Who knew Gertrude Stein would have been so petty to have come in and cancelled her Shakespeare and Co library card!!!!! Me know that I've read The Paris Bookseller that's who!!!!
