The Book
When I first arrived in Paris, Village Voice was the reference for its impeccable and thoughtful stock curation and the impressive list of events. Browsing their window was an invitation to a conversation. I once asked Odile how she made her selection, she replied “read, read, read, it’s all I do, every evening, every day.” I was inspired after every visit to this bookshop and now I’m inspired after reading Village Voices.
Wonderfully written, this memoir of a bookseller and her Parisian bookshop, told through the literary events she hosted is a genuine treasure trove of literary life between the exploration of language, writing, and the role of the author from an American and European perspective”.
— Sylvia Whitman, Shakespeare and Company
Foreword by Pulitzer Prize Poet Charles Kenneth Williams
— Janet Hulstrand , freelance writer, editor, writing coach of Bonjour Paris
” Village Voices is thus a vastly important documentation of both literary and social/cultural history during those years. For that reason, I predict that this book will be read and valued for as long as the literary history of Paris is read. “
— Odile Hellier interviewed by Alan Riding at the American Library in Paris about her book.
This rich collection of interviews with and profiles of authors who gave readings at Hellier’s English-language bookshop, which she operated in Paris’s sixth arrondissement from 1981 to 2012, presents a stimulating portrait of the Parisian literary scene replete with transporting photographs and gentle gossip. The life of Hellier’s store dovetailed with the “Third Wave” of American expats in Paris, which brought countercultural figures including Kathy Acker, along with writers including David Sedaris and James Ellroy. Hellier fastidiously catalogs each author’s activities at the shop, compiling snippets of q&as she conducted from the ’80s through the early aughts, many of which portend contemporary conversations about identity (Sherman Alexie recalls being “amazed” after reading poems by Native authors for the first time) and political correctness, which Jay McInerney says he hates. An earnest and modest host (almost to a fault, as she hardly shares anything about her personal life), Hellier lets her generosity shine through, as when she expresses gratitude for being able to send Samuel Beckett an Oxford English Dictionary at his retirement home. While the sheer number of names and titles on offer can be dizzying, it’s all but impossible to finish this compendium without adding, excitedly, to one’s own reading list. For literature lovers, it’s a feast.
– Publishers Weekly, June 6, 2024
— Alan Riding, author of And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris.
“In the early 1980’s, as if seeking a fresh mission in life, a
well-travelled French women, Odile Hellier decided to open an English-language
bookstore in Paris. To her considerable surprise, almost overnight the Village Voice
became a Left Bank shrine to Anglo-American thought and letters. In her aptly named
memoir, she recalls the extraordinary parade of visiting and ex-pat writers for whom a
reading at the bookstore became something like a rite of passage. Her decision to
close shop in 2012 is mourned to this day, but in these pages, she vividly recaptures
the brilliance, humor and camaraderie that made that cramped space on the rue
Princesse so special. Indeed, in Village Voices, Odile Hellier gives scores of writers a
fresh chance to be celebrated.
— Richard Ford, Pulitzer price and author of the tetralogy of Frank Bascombe
“Village Voices is a completely unique and cherishable chronicle of a
time and a place which- if you were lucky enough to be there- gracefully invited you
into the wider world’s literary imagination. Odile Hellier is incomparable.”
— Jake Lamar, author of Viper’s Dream and Rendezvous Eighteenth.
“For three decades, Odile Hellier’s Village Voice was simply the most
important English-language bookshop in Paris. After an early life as dramatic as a
world of literature, Odile founded a shop whose selections reflected the eclecticism
and erudition of its owner. But it was the readings and signings that made the Voice
legendary. When the shop closed its doors in 2012, it seemed as if a magnificent
thirty year-long book party/Paris had disappeared forever. But thanks to an
astounding archive mother lode, Odile has brought back to vivid life those
extraordinary evenings.
Every chapter of Village Voices is bursting with startling insights and revealing
anecdotes. Odile presents exquisite portraits of a universe of writers, each author
expressing themselves in their idiosyncratic eloquence as they engage with incisive questions from the passionate readers who filled the intimate space of the shop. The
long party may be over, but Odile Hellier has given lovers of literary Paris this
indispensable evocation of an era. Village Voices is a sumptuous, compulsive
readable feast.”
— Jeffrey Greene, author of French Spirits and American Spirituals.
“In her superb written hybrid book, Odile Hellier ….offers a larger,
complex understanding of stylistic incenting and social consciousness that diverse
group of major writers and translators contribute to Paris literary life… a crucial
literary resource that is also thoroughly entertaining.”
— Livia Manera Sambuy, literary critic and author of In Search of Amrit Kaur, An India Princess in Wartime Paris.
“French and international book lovers mingled with Parisan editors
and publishers, shared a glass of wine and a new discovery, a heretical opinion, and
took the conversation to the outside of the Rue Princesse, for another shared
pleasure: an unguilty cigarette.” The New Yorker.
— Heather Hartley, author of two poetry collections of which Adult Swim, and Teacher of creative writing.
“Reading Odile Hellier’s compelling and seminal Village Voices, I
couldn’t stop thinking about opera. This memoir of the venerated Village Voice
Bookshop in Paris is like a song, a lyric to literature in all of its myriad forms and to
those who live by it and love it. The distinctive voices of writers and poets and
audience members and artists and booksellers all come together to create a
resounding and rich chorus, truly an opera-both in the idea of classical music as well
as the idea in Italian of the word “opera” as a work of art. For this book is both. It
reverberates with the vibrant, remarkable voices of the many writers who read at the
shop and participated in its rich life. This is a book that resonates from the first page
to the last.”
— Janet Skeslien Charles, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Library.
“If you love Paris, you’ll love Village Voices, an intimate,
fascinating glimpse of literary life in the City of Light.”