Un Piccolo Negozio di Fiori a Parigi by Maxim Huerta

What a wonderful book Un Piccolo

Negozio di Fiori a Parigi by Maxim Huerta. If you search for magic, if you search for escapism, but if, at the same time, you want to think at the meaning of life, choices, and destinies, existences, death, changes, this reading is absolutely for you.

When I picked up this book I was searching for a magical book, a book in grade to transport me in another dimension. 

I was searching for a book in grade to let me dream like Chocolat by Joanne Harris, or The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Divakaruni. I felt that this time I would have been satisfied by my choice.

I can tell you I discovered not just that but also a book of great intensity, love, respect for generations, places, cultures, people.

L'Etoile Manquante is the flower shop located in Saint Germain, Paris,  born by the necessity of Dominique Brulé of keeping alive his big love, Julie. He does it thanks to his beautiful and adored flowers. It's a romantic name the one picked up by Dominique Brulé for his flower shop, thinking better. It reminds to the past, to a star disappeared.

Julie died when they were too young for a devastation like. Dominique understands that his life is becoming senseless.

Without her, days, months, years, nothing has anymore the old meaning. What to do of his own life? From Bourgogne, to Paris, now, the existence, love, seasons don't smell of the same fragrance than before.

One day he met along his way an old lady. She was 90 years and she had lost her beloved husband many years ago because of a car incident, while he was returning home after that he had bought some magazines; after that she would have looked in a strange way at all that people who bought newsmagazines. His husband had a store.

She offered to Dominique of restoring and opening again the old shop of her husband. He would have been happy, she added, remembering him of being happy! 

Dominique started to crying violently. Violently as he hadn't never done before.

A shop of flowers sounded the most appropriate one.

He didn't know that Julie loved peonies; he discovered it the day of her funeral.

After all he still didn't know a lot about her: but he knew the secrets of flowers and flowers were his destiny, from the moment in which one day he discovered a precious book of a beloved relative.

He open Les Fleurs Animées and flowers started to dance magically close to him, becoming alive, smiling, laughing, in a dance that would have meant to him a special magical connection with that fairy and enchanted world.

Dominique knows that a real gentleman is respectful of life and death: there will be respect for the dead people that must be continued to be remembered, but also for the living ones. Forgotten artists, ladies in search, still, of being appreciated and loved by admirers. A small gesture changes the existance of a lady.

He knows the hidden secret meaning of every flower, and he knows which flower will be more beloved for his customers, because in that moment they need that flower and not another one; for staying well, for being encouraged, appreciated, trusted, wanted, loved.

Dominique is pretty old although his soul is young and vital and his memories anchored at that old and lost love. His house is beautiful because impregnated of memories; it smells of books, burned candles, old furniture and photographs; precious memories of an existence spent living in the present but also looking at the past with that sweet melancholy in grade of giving back serenity to his existence, because after all Julie lives in every flower of his shop, in every person asking for a flower, in every soul met during a day.

Their love was intense as the one described by Hemingway when young, still poor and plenty of hopes afforded to Paris: "We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warrm together and loved each other."

They had a special place, romantic, beloved, where they loved to indulge located in the romantic Left Bank of Paris: the bookstore Shakespeare and Company and the Café close to it. They loved to spend time there; it was romantic, it was close to Notre-Dame; and some people told that not too distant from Shakespare and Company there is the oldest tree of Paris. In this sentimental place, Dominique and Julie chatted, created the base of their future, or what it would have happened of their existences, and of their being a couple.

A couple destroyed by destiny too soon as they would have discovered.

There are many pills of wisdom in this book that will let you reflect about the meaning and fluidity of life; the same water won't pass under the same river two times and people change with age, with situations, with experiences and their expectations will become different, and nothing will return to be the same because time, maturity, a different vision of life thanks to the experience accumulated living will give a different perspective and vision of the whole.

Dominique has two friends who love to stops by everyday in his shop: Tilde (Matilde) and Mercedes from Spain. Both of them live in Paris from decades. Close friends, they seem to be two bodies and a soul but sometimes it is not true.

Violeta is the third spanish of this story. From Madrid, she is so sad. 23 years, pregnant, Pablo, her boyfriend cheated her.

She run away from her past, choosing Paris, and trying to cope with this new difficult situation. She needs a job and one day she asks  am help at Dominique. Dominique is impressed by this girl, because under many ways she looks like his poor wife. Plus she has the name of a flower.

The two become friends, and Violeta feels that Dominique is better than her dad under many ways. One day Dominique will offer her a tea in his house. Very warm place, Violeta will ask him if he can permits her of staying there.

Dominique accepts although the scent of a beautiful girl, young, reminds him of his past, Julie, and what he lived with her.

Mercedes's favorite place of the city is Shakespeare and Company. She loves to spend time there, in the first floor, lost in her thoughts, sat alone, close to all that books, hugged by the spirits of melacholy, as writes the author.

Mercedes one day disappears and considering that everyday Tilde and Mercedes says hello to Dominique and Violeta, people are worried and they start to investigate.

After all the existence of people can't be treated with superficiality.

Mercedes has had a heavy past and her beloved friends didn't know that once, although for a brief moment she had an important man in her existence.

Violeta will discover Etienne, the son of this man, Oscar, from Grenoble. The shocking story that Violeta will assimilate is important. Etienne wants to convince Mercedes that maybe it is better to meet Oscar, who, once, meant to her a lot.

Mercedes is horrified by the idea. That man hasn't been good with her; better to move on, better to forget the entire story, although not always is possible to forget.

Mercedes when she is at Shakespeare and Company loves to add little piece of papers in various books. A sign of her passage. One day Tilde will find one of them in a book by Olive Ann Burns Cold Sassy Tree: "Not thinking sometimes means happiness" she wrote her friend.

Tilde was sacrified by her parents. She didn't live her own life because she assisted her old parents, while the rest of her brothers and sisters created wonderful existences.

In this dense book, plenty of love, plenty of re-borns, departures and new beginnings and where life is sweet also when people have been heavily touched I found an emblematic phrase: No one feels melancholy for anyone, apart for ourselves and who we have been in the past.

An important thematic of the book is memory and the importance of a good partner. In the case of Mercedes the lost love, returned with the semblance of his son Etienne, asking to forgive him, asking for a visit because close to the end of his life, is like a wild hurricane in a placid existence.

Can the existence of a man be a "fake one" close to a new partner, because the previous one unforgettable?

Memories, facts, joys, worries of decades spent close to the choosen partner don't say anything?

For Oscar, no. Oscar, the ex partner of Mercedes continues to think of her, because he didn't love her well, because he didn't appreciate her, because he was superficial and for this superficiality he lost the most important gift of his existence.

If Mercedes doesn't want to see Oscar Violeta and Tilde will. And the meeting between Tilde in the role of Mercedes and Oscar will be straining.

At the end Tilde will think that she has again begged an "I love you" directed to someone else. Her life is like thetone portrayed by Giulietta Masina, adds strongly the author in The Nights of Cabiria, where the whore prays: prays for the arrival of a prince, someone special in grade of saving her, and her existence, although this dream won't never become true.

Tilde's life has always been...imaginary in the best and also sad sense of the word.

Grenoble is cold but feelings between Etienne and Violeta starts to become pretty warm and happy. Etienne understands Violeta and Violeta falls in love for Etienne.

What it follows is the happiness for the arrival of a new life, and at the same time the mutation of time, discovering that it is not too late for loving, but maybe that sometimes we won't never be in grade to love a new person as experiences Dominique. Dominique is a wonderful special soul, assisted by magical creatures and connected with the most beautiful parts of the universe; that universe that once his existence will be over, will hug him immediately, re-borning spiritually in the body of the  baby of Violeta, because life continues, and it is also magical.

I am speechless because this book is much more than what I would have expected to read.

It's an erudite book, where readers will also find great book suggestionss it's a book speaking of love.

Love seen with the eyes of maturity, and the one of youth; aeternal love, the one life won't never remove from the mind of people; it's a mixture of sweet but also bitter stories of a bunch of people who, for a reason of another expatriated in a romantic corner of Paris, where the sweetness of the city, its beauty, flowers, romantic corners, good croissants and cups of coffee will mitigate the asperity of life.

Highly recommended.

Anna Maria Polidori