Jean Perdu has foregone the pleasures of life since his lover left him twenty-one years ago.  One day he decides,after all these years, to open the letter he received from her days after she left him.  As a result of what is in this letter, Jean takes his business, a floating bookstore, down the Seine to begin the adventure of a lifetime.  There are no light touches in this novel; everything, for me, was heavy-handed, predictable and obvious from his name(John Lost) to his similarity to Huck Finn.  Also, although the word love is on almost every other page, nowhere did the feeling of love come across between any of the characters.