Village Voices: A Memoir of the Village Voice Bookshop by Odile Hellier
“Well after the bookshop had closed, I found myself looking through hundreds of author transcripts and listening to just as many tapes. These voices were witty, jocular, even outrageous — a sign of the times that could only make me smile. They were testimonies to brilliant writings, steadfast friendships, beguiling loves, and bold, stylistic strands of beauty… When I close my eyes I still hear them rising in ever-widening circles from our small, but cozy niche in the neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.” – Odile Hellier
Village Voices: A Memoir of the Village Voice Bookshop is a must-read for anyone who loves good books, and lively anecdotal literary history.
From 1982-2012, this bookshop was a very popular and vibrant intellectual and cultural center for Anglophone writers and readers in Paris. It was also a much beloved — and invaluable — Parisian cultural institution.

That shop was owned and managed by a Frenchwoman, Odile Hellier, who to this day has a legendary reputation among writers and readers in Paris — and beyond —as an exemplary bookseller, a dedicated champion of contemporary writers, and herself an important and very impactful intellectual and cultural force.
Hellier has now published a memoir about that legendary shop, and the writers whose readings there were such an important contribution to literary life in Paris for those thirty years.
The book is aptly named Village Voices (plural) — for Hellier has done more here than just tell her own personal story, and the story of the bookshop, interesting as those stories are.
From the beginning, she recorded most of the readings she held at the store, first on cassette tapes and later on videotape. Not wanting these fascinating conversations between writers and readers to be lost, she has devoted a large part of her time in “retirement” to transcribing the tapes, and then selecting from the transcripts to include in her memoir.
The result is that readers of this book can “hear” the voices not only of the abundant list of stellar writers who came to the Village Voice to read and discuss their books — but also the people who came to hear them; who asked them questions; who engaged in dialogue with them.
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.
You can read the book straight through if you want to, and it is very readable. But because it is organized topically and thematically, not chronologically, you can also choose to browse — as if in a leisurely browse through a wonderful bookstore —choosing authors, time periods, topics on a whim — or reading first the ones that interest you most and exploring the others later. (One way or another you will want to read all of it, I promise you.)
This is the way I am reading the book for the first time, and I recommend it. But whether you read it straight through or follow my method, I recommend not trying to read it too quickly. There is so much substance and depth on each page of this book that I think a slow, leisurely pace is almost required. This is not because the reading is heavy, or difficult: it’s not. It’s just that there’s an awful lot to think about presented in these pages. I think leaving time to ponder and reflect between readings is beneficial for that reason.
I know that I will be returning to this book again and again in the months and years to come, to see what Hellier has to say about this writer, or that one. Or to read again what they themselves said about their work. Or to experience vicariously once again the lively discussions, the witty remarks, the joyful spirit of people who love literature gathered together, spilling from these pages. Writers and readers engaging in passionate discussion of literature — and of life — in a lovely little bookshop on the rue Princesse.
In other words—I couldn’t possibly recommend this book more strongly.
Purchase a copy for yourself at your favorite independent bookstore, like the Red Wheelbarrow or Shakespeare & Company in Paris, or via Bookshop.org.
Lead photo credit : Odile Hellier interviewed by Alan Riding at the American Library in Paris about her book. Photo: oliviasnaije/ Instagram
More in book review, bookshop, Memoir, Village voices