A Novel Bookstore

A Novel Bookstore - Laurence Cossé
(translated by) Alison Anderson
Original French Title: Au bon roman
Originally published 2009 Editions Gallimard)
English Translation: 2010 Europa Editions
416 pages

       Since today is Bastille Day (Joyeux Le Quatorze Juillet!), I figured that it would be a good day to review something French.  And so we have the book I've most recently finished reading: Laurence Cossé's A Novel Bookstore.

       To be honest, I picked this book up at the Border's liquidation sale based on two reasonings.  The first was that the book's cover design is similar to that for Muriel Barbery's Elegance of the Hedgehog and Gourmet Rhapsody (as the US copies are all published by the same publisher.)  The second reason was that in reading the blurb-synopsis the book appeared to involve a mystery involving a special bookstore and, as somewhat of a bibliophile, a book about a mystery revolving around bookstore sounded awesome.

       Ivan (Van) and Francesca's new titular bookstore in Paris, The Good Novel, only stocks the best of literature, decided by a secret selection committee of eight members whose names are only known to Van and Francesca.  Once three of the eight members are attacked in a short time span, Van and Francesca fear that someone else has learned the identity of the committee and are attacking them in an attempt to shut down The Good Novel, they have no choice but to go to the police for help in discovering who is behind that and other attacks against the store.

       Being as secretive as they are Van and Francesca go to a recommended fellow bibliophile who is a police officer and begin to tell the story of the attacks, beginning with the events that brought the two together and gave them the idea for The Good Novel, a bookstore selling only the best literature from around the world.

       While the story sounds like it will be a criminal investigation, the majority of the book deals with how Van and Francesca came to the idea of creating one, great bookstore selling only the best of novels, how they selected the eight authors to be their secret selecting committee, and about the problems they have starting up the business including being blasted in the press and on the internet.

       This book just seems very French for some reason (which, is not at all a bad thing); however, I felt as if I may have gotten more out of it if I had read more literature beforehand.  Allusions and mentions are frequently made to various books and authors who I had either not read or not heard of.  A number of these are French authors and at times I had to run to the googlemachine to check something out.  This is nice in that it gives a reader recommendations on supposedly great writers; however, it also has the habit of making a reader feel a bit lost and confused at times with all of the name dropping.

       As for the detective story that the book starts out to be, that quickly becomes lost into the narrative of how the store is started, with the only way the two booksellers being able to tell the story cleverly done through a narrative form.  However, it quickly becomes evident that this creation narrative will be the majority of the story, with the aforementioned three attacks on committee members taking a passing roll.  When, 319 pages into the 416-page-novel, the police officer reminds the booksellers "the beginning you mentioned three crimes", while I had enjoyed the some 250 pages of bookstore creation backstory, I was ready for some detective work since A Novel Bookstore appears to start out as a mystery!

       There also was a continual mentioning that "the left" kept attacking the store for trying to sell just what the owners and committee considered great works of literature, which somewhat rubbed me the wrong way.  It's not a terrible novel, but I expected something else and with the massive dumping of novel and author names which the characters found acceptable/not acceptable for the store, the novel at times felt uncomfortable, like going to a wedding where you know no one except maybe the bride or groom and an odd mutual friend.  Maybe I just need to read more French literature?

       The book directs you to the website for the fake bookstore of the novel, which is a clever bit of publicity; however, the website hasn't been updated since September 2010.  Similarly the bookstore's English facebook page apparently would suggest other good novels, but doesn't seem to have been updated for some time either. 

Rating: a generous 3 out of 5 rating as I did enjoy the backstory about the fake bookstore's creation which takes up most of the book's length, but what started out as a mystery didn't seem to stay as one.