The Staff Shelf: Albertine

When we walk into a bookstore, the first place we go is the staff recommendation shelves—it’s how you get a quick sense of the personality of the store. The very best bookstores are merely a reflection of the eclectic, deeply felt opinions of the book-lovers who work there. As part of our Interview with a Bookstore, we asked the staff at Albertine what they recommend.

SLIDESHOW: Albertine Staff Shelf

: TOM (DEPUTY DIRECTOR) RECOMMENDS: What begins as a romp through seamy Paris nightclubs quickly becomes an exacting portrait of a passionate affair, and Garreta’s exploration of both milieus with a deft mixture of immediacy and intellectual detachment is mesmerizing. Oh, and the entire thing is gender-less, and Emma Ramadan’s translation is superb.

: TOM (DEPUTY DIRECTOR) RECOMMENDS: This is by no means Baudrillard’s most famous tract, but it is one of his more searing works, laying waste to decades of fruitless attempts by intellectuals and politicians to solve any of the problems created by and within the post-industrialized, capitalist world. Lacking any real capability for change, he says, we’re left to “enjoy the spectacle.”

: FRANCOIS-XAVIER (DIRECTOR) RECOMMENDS: Still the best novel by Fred Vargas, and it’s not even a contest. In the Parisian suburbs, primal fear sets in when buildings begin to be covered with a mysterious reversed “4,” announcing the return of the black plague. Comissaire Adamsberg and his unlikely team investigate… Outrageous characters, well-crafted intrigue, a noir masterpiece.

: FRANCOIS-XAVIER (DIRECTOR) RECOMMENDS: Lemaitre’s Prix Goncourt-winning novel follows two former soldiers as they attempt to reintegrate into civilian life in a country that seems to have quickly forgotten the sacrifices they made. They develop a scheme as immoral as it is lucrative: take advantage of national pride by promising to build monuments and disappearing with the payments. The Great Swindle is a powerful, violent novel that explores the dark time immediately following WWI; a period dominated by cynicism, embitterment, and lack of trust.

: MIRIAM (BOOKSELLER) RECOMMENDS: As Modiano recollects facts about his past in the clear and sober style that has become his trademark, it becomes impossible not to notice the contrast between the simplicity of his sentences and the strength of the emotion that they trigger in us. Nostalgia is missing from the text, and instead, a remote and almost silent pain is brought to the surface.

: MIRIAM (BOOKSELLER) RECOMMENDS: As her husband walks out on their twenty-year marriage to live with Noëllie, a young and brilliant lawyer, Monique’s world is shattered. So much so that she comes very close to losing her sense of self. If not for its subtle construction, The Woman Destroyed would be a classic novel of love’s labors lost. Later, as she was writing The Coming of Age, Simone de Beauvoir defined her narrative technique in The Woman Destroyed as an attempt “to make silence speak.”