A real page-turner
Having written four books of her own, author Gillian Harvey explores the reasons why English- speaking expats set up bookshops in France
F
or many bibliophiles, the idea of running a bookshop is a long-held dream. To work in the
world of books, read to your heart’s content, recommend your favourites and get to know like-minded customers sounds idyllic.Others may dream of moving to France and embracing a different way of life. But what of those who want
to combine the two, and opt to open English-language bookshops in a French setting? Does merging two dreams work? Is there sufficient demand? And in these days of internet shopping, do people flock to bookshops the way they used to? I spoke to the
people behind three thriving bookshops doing just that to discover what it’s like to live two dreams at once.
THE RED WHEELBARROW, PARIS When Penelope Fletcher moved to Paris in 1990, she was already an experienced bookseller. In fact, she’d opened her own bookstore at the age of 19: “I grew up on Hornby Island on the west coast of Canada – a really special place, three islands from Vancouver,” she says. “When I was 19, I decided to open a second-hand bookstore while at college.” A chance comment by a
teacher may even have sparked a future ambition. “One of my
teachers at the time said: ‘are you a second Sylvia Beach?’ Sylvia was an American woman who had opened a bookshop in Paris in 1919 and is famous for having published Ulysses by James Joyce – it kind of stuck with me. I wasn’t sure who she was at the time, but I found out. Maybe that’s why I ended up here!” says Penelope. Years later, she made her own
move to Paris from Montreal, where she was working as a bookseller. “I arrived in France on a one-way-ticket with just 200 French francs in my back pocket,” she says. She soon found a job at the
famous Brentano’s bookshop on Avenue de l’Opéra and settled in the city. And in
“Near the Luxembourg gardens, the two bookshops carry on Sylvia Beach’s bookselling legacy in the Latin Quarter”
the 11 years that preceded the opening of The Red Wheelbarrow Bookstore, she worked in two Paris bookshops, became an English teacher, married a jazz musician, and had three children. Being married to a jazz
musician made financial stability a goal. So, in 2001, when her youngest child was three, Penelope decided to work with her strengths and opened her own independent bookshop in the city. The original Red
Penelope’s independent bookshop in the Latin Quarter, The Red Wheelbarrow, thrived despite the Covid 19 pandemic
52 FRENCH PROPERTY NEWS: September/October 2023
Wheelbarrow Bookstore opened its doors in 2001 in the Marais and traded for 11 years. The shop was closed in 2012 when Penelope had to leave Paris for a time and travel to Canada for personal reasons. “I returned to Paris in 2014, but
had no hope of re-opening the bookshop,” she says. However, fate had other ideas
for Penelope. In 2018, the Red Wheelbarrow opened again on the Left Bank, on the famous bookstore street Médicis after a long-time friend of Penelope’s, Danielle Cumbo, who worked for a publisher in the States, made a special request. “I met Danielle at the London
book fair in 2001 before I opened the Red Wheelbarrow. She worked for Harper Collins at the time. She was the first one to tell me what a great idea it was. We stayed in touch even after the shop closed. Then in 2016, she confided that she had terminal cancer. I asked if there was anything I could do for her and, to my surprise, she proposed that we open The
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© THE RED WHEELBARROW, EMMA'S BOOKSHOP
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