The Red Wheelbarrow Bookstore Shines in New Location
February 6, 2019
By Patricia Tennison
If there’s anything better than an independent bookstore, it’s watching such a store sadly disappear—then spring back into life.
That’s what has happened with The Red Wheelbarrow, an English bookstore in Paris. I was wandering along rue Saint Paul in my Marais neighborhood in 2012, when I finally spotted the little store that I had heard about. I dropped in, but only in time to chat with the owner as she was filling boxes with books from almost barren shelves.
“Know anyone who wants to buy a bookstore?” Penelope Fletcher said back then. There was a sadness in her voice, but I didn’t pry. Paris can be a hard place to have a small business, and small bookstores everywhere get threatened by mega stores.
I didn’t pry, but I mentally scanned my list of contacts. Marianne would love to work in a bookstore, and so would a half dozen others. But own the store? Deal with the leases and purchasing and the right prices needed to compete with bigger stores and still stay in business?
“I don’t know anyone,” I said. And then, quite frankly, I forgot about The Red Wheelbarrow.
Well, it’s back. Penelope Fletcher is back—this time with 10 other partners to support her—at a new location, 9 rue de Medicis, 75006. That’s on the Left Bank, very near the Luxembourg Gardens, on a small street with several other small bookstores.
She clarified that it wasn’t the bookstore business that had failed. “It was events in my life,” she said. Then she added, “I started off married.”
Penelope was born in Canada, “on an island, off an island, off an island near Vancouver,” she laughed. The bookstore in Paris was a lifelong dream. After “events,” she closed the first Red Wheelbarrow location. (“There was someone who agreed to buy the bookstore, but then he disappeared.”) She went back to teaching English for a while and took a trip to India to take a publishing class. Then in fall 2018, she re-opened the bookstore.
Her 10 new partners, all women, “include three or four major partners. Others I write to for advice,” she said.
The sign that you are apt to see first above the bookstore is “Librairie Anglophone,” or English bookstore. And, indeed, The Red Wheelbarrow specializes in current and classic works in English for adults and children.
The bookstore was always known for its friendly, personal attention; that is, it was known for its owner, in casual pants and with long, loose hair.
“We’re just beginning,” Penelope said, as we talked about her second start. “This time, I know so much more.”
The Red Wheelbarrow, 9 rue de Medicis, 75006, is open every day.
Phone: 33.1.42.01.81.47. www.TheRedWheelbarrowBookstore.com
* * * * *
The Red Wheelbarrow?
Why did Penelope name her bookstore The Red Wheelbarrow? It was inspired by a poem by American poet and physician William Carlos Williams (1883–1963). The then-untitled poem was first published in Lyon, France, she said.
“Lyon,” she said, “that’s a good connection. And Williams was a friend of Sylvia Beach and the whole Paris writers’ scene.
“I also love the message: So much depends on something else.”
Here is that very short poem:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
—William Carlos Williams
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Photo: On top, Penelope Fletcher outside The Red Wheelbarrow bookstore at its new location, 9 rue Medicis, 75006. Photo by Joseph Prendergast.
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