Simon Pare

Following a failed suicide attempt inspired by her loveless marriage, Marianne Messman travels to Brittany with the intention of trying again but changes her mind when the guests of a charming bistro reintroduce her to life's delights.

"A brilliantly constructed popular history of the world careening toward the Second World War, as told through the love lives of some of the most famous and fascinating figures of the era. As the Roaring Twenties wind down, the great minds of the time have their minds on other concerns besides art and war. Jean-Paul Sartre waits anxiously in a Parisian café for his first date with Simone de Beauvoir, who stands him up. Marlene Dietrich slips from...

""There are books that are suitable for a million people, others for only a hundred. There are even remedies--I mean books--that were written for one person only...A book is both medic and medicine at once. It makes a diagnosis as well as offering therapy. Putting the right novels to the appropriate ailments: that's how I sell books." Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes...