Village Voices

“For literature lovers, it’s a feast.”—Publishers Weekly

“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.” —Richard Ford

“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 Paris literary life between the 1980s and early-2000s. It reflects the politics and concerns of the period, and is also a compelling exploration of language, writing, and the role of the author from both an American and European perspective.” —Sylvia Whitman, owner of Shakespeare & Company bookshop in Paris

“This rich collection of interviews with and profiles of authors who gave readings at Heller’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. . . . For literature lovers, it’s a feast.” —Publishers Weekly

“In the early 1980s, as if seeking a fresh mission in life, a well travelled French woman, 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 of 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 the cramped space on the rue Princesse so special. Indeed, in Village Voices, Odile Hellier gives scores of writers a fresh chance to be celebrated.” —Alan Riding, author of And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris.

“Every chapter of Village Voices is bursting with startling insights and revealing anecdotes. . . . Odile Hellier has given lovers of literary Paris this indispensable evocation of an era. Village Voices is a sumptuous, compulsively readable feast.”
—Jake Lamar, author of Viper’s Dream and Rendezvous Eighteenth

“In her superbly written hybrid book, Odile Hellier… offers a larger, complex understanding of stylistic inventing and social consciousness that a diverse group of major writers and translators contribute to Paris literary life… a crucial literary resource that is also thoroughly entertaining.”
—Jeffrey Greene, author of French Spirits and American Spirituals

“A song, a lyric to literature in all of its myriad forms and to those who live by it and love it. A resounding and rich chorus, truly an opera… that resonates from the first page to the last.”
—Heather Hartley, author of Adult Swim and former Paris Editor at Tin House magazine

“An intimate, fascinating glimpse of literary life in the City of Light.” —Janet Skeslien Charles, author of The Paris Library