The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Maher, Kerri. The Paris Bookseller. Berkley, 2022."

Kerri Maher's novel, The Paris Bookseller, written from a third person limited point of view, follows the life of Sylvia Beach in 1920s Paris. At the outset of the novel, Sylvia moved to Paris and met Adrienne Monnier, who owned a small French bookstore. The protagonist developed romantic feelings and a friendship with the bookkeeper. As she spent time in the European capitol, Sylvia met other artists and expatriates, but she was pained by her unrequited love for Adrienne. She joined the Red Cross and lived in Serbia in an attempt to escape her emotional turmoil. While she originally conceived the idea to open a French bookstore in New York, Sylvia decided that it would be more impactful to start an English literature bookstore in Paris. With the help of her mother, and Adrienne, she opened Shakespeare and Company. The bookstore was met with intrigue and became the hub for artists in the modernist literary movement.

Sylvia developed a romantic relationship with Adrienne, soon after the opening of her store. The two women defied heteronormative expectations by openly embracing their queer identities and began living together. While Sylvia loved Adrienne, she worried that she was not sexually experimental enough for her partner. Adrienne assured her that her only unhappiness in the relationship was rooted in concern that Sylvia was devoting too much of her emotional energy to people who did not appreciate her.

Later on, after Sylvia learned that James Joyce’s novel, Ulysses, was facing censorship in the United States, she offered to publish the text. Adrienne expressed concern about her investment in the project and warned that while Joyce’s writing was true art, he was not an admirable individual. Sylvia dismissed this criticism but soon struggled to navigate the artist’s needy and petulant behavior. Joyce worked infrequently and haphazardly on finishing the novel and demanded that the type be reset after it had been sent to the printer. Despite these difficulties, Sylvia successfully published Ulysses and began distributing the novel in Europe. Ernest Hemingway helped her devise a plan to smuggle the novel into the United States, and she soon found a market for Joyce’s provocative work overseas. Soon after, Samuel Roth, the owner of a pornographic publishing house, began pirating Ulysses. His illegal behavior ignited a long legal battle between him and Sylvia that strained her psyche and relationship with Adrienne.

Toward the end of the novel, Sylvia conceded in her fight with Roth but was faced with a new challenge. After Joyce expressed his desire to publish the novel with a larger house, Sylvia struggled to sell the rights for a fair price. When the battle proved futile, she decided to focus her energy on her personal relationships, and growing Shakespeare and Company instead. She devoted her time to grieving her mother’s death, repairing the distance in her partnership with Adrienne, and ensuring that her bookstore succeeded. She started the Friends of Shakespeare and Company reading and watched her store flourish, even without publishing Joyce’s novel. In the closing chapter, Sylvia recognized that her creative endeavors and relationships fortified the modernist literary movement and the expatriate community in Paris.