The Little Bookshop On The Seine

“They can wait.” She gave me a flippant shrug. “It’s not nine yet.” She grabbed my hand and walked briskly to the back of the shop. “So the rooms all run into one another, like a sentence. Once you start, you just keep going…and you’ll eventually end up in the courtyard outside, unless you take the staircase to the left, and then you’ll end up lost. It’s a rabbit warren.”

The main open floor of the bookstore led into the first room up by one step. It was stacked floor to ceiling with books, some shelves leaned so far forward they were almost curved overhead like the crest of a wave. A huge mirror hung from the ceiling, reflecting everything in a warped Alice in Wonderland kind of way.

On the floor, a once ruby red rug lay almost threadbare, its colors dulled to a faded rose, indelibly changed by foot traffic, but at the edges, you could make out how truly vibrant it had once been. Old armchairs, their leather like wrinkled faces, sat solemnly. How many readers had wandered into this room, pulled a musty book from the shelves, and spent the day absorbed in a tale, every now and then glancing up, the scent of the Seine blowing in like a whisper as it had done for generations?

Oceane smiled. “And next, we have the lending library.” She led me through an archway, where someone had scrawled in thick, black permanent marker ‘This way to paradise’.

The lending library was ripe with the thick stench of old tomes and the lemony scent of new novels. Their fragrances mingled together in the space, almost like a perfume, a heady combination of past and present.

Sophie’s bookshop was so alive it hummed, dust motes danced, and I had the fight the urge to flop on a chair, and snatch up the nearest book.

An antique grandfather clock stood to one side of the room, its chimes long since stopped, the golden hands paused on the witching hour. “Who runs the lending library?” I asked.

Oceane leaned against the wall. “Bertie, François, and Phillippe. They organize their shifts between them, and keep track of the loans. You don’t need to do anything for it. Sophie’s pretty lax about the whole process. There’s index cards, and stamps, it’s very old school. The lending library is hallowed – it’s been available for locals since the doors opened here back in the twenties. During the Great Depression, no one could afford much of anything, especially books, so strangers found their way here, and knew they could take whatever they wished. They became members, friends, and weren’t faceless or nameless any more.”

“This history practically seeps through the walls.” I was in awe of the shop, it had presence, almost like it was a character unto itself. “Do you ever wonder who sat here a century ago, and rummaged through these boxes of books?”

Her eyes grew bright. “Of course. I imagine people back then stopped past with rumbling bellies, their lives grim because of the depression, until they found their way here, and they could forget their troubles, escaping into the pages of a good book, a warm drink in hand. What could be better than that? Sophie’s grandfather opened the store. When he first started, he only used the front parlor, but as time went by his reputation spread, he grew more successful and expanded into the other rooms, eventually buying the apartments above. He never changed his principles…everyone was welcome here whether they had money or not. It was popular among American writers back then, a meeting place for literary transients.”

“I get goosebumps, thinking about the stories they could’ve told. Do you think when they finally settled, back on home soil, they remembered their time here fondly?”

“Oui,” she said, crossing her arms against the chill in the room. “A lot of them were young. Traveling after the war or just because they were free, who knows? And when it was time to move, or go back to reality, they always had this place in their heart. Sophie has a thick folder of correspondence, letters sent over decades, people thanking them for their hospitality, some dedicating the books they wrote here to Sophie’s grandfather. Others saying they searched their whole lives for the simple happiness Paris provided, but never found it again. Over a bottle or two of vin rouge, I read each and every one of them. I’ve told her she should publish them…an epic love story of people and place.”

“That would be an amazing book…” Taking in the room, I thought of the people who once inhabited this space; I pictured the scene in black and white, like an old photograph. “The room has a sense of timelessness to it.” As if time had truly stopped, just like the grandfather clock. And those people long since gone from this world had found the place just as it was now, a sanctuary for word lovers.

“The store has a rich and famous history. It’s why people come here and don’t want to leave.” Oceane spoke in reverent tones, gazing wistfully around. The rooms were weathered, the furniture battered, the shop’s once former glory dimmed, faded like late afternoon sunlight through a dusty window, which made it one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen.

“Why would you want to leave?” I said. It was like a grand old dame, this shop. Once haughty, now a reflection of its past, and all that happened here.

She laughed and surveyed me. “Your face is flushed like you’ve fallen in love too.”