User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
This is a beautifully written story of tragic loss and grief, but it is tempered by friendship and beautiful memories and love. Violette Toussaint has been the caretaker of a cemetery for twenty years . A recluse in a way, at night when it’s quiet and the people she interacts, with the gravediggers - Nono, Gaston, Elvis , the undertakers - the Lucchini brothers and the priest Cedric have left for the day. She interacts with others, as well, those who bury, those who mourn. I found it so moving how reverential and respectful, Violette was to those who were buried there as she meticulously records their funerals, the celebrations of their lives, and tends to the graves when families are unable to with flowers. It’s a wonder how she is able to do this when she is filled with grief of her own, but as her story unfolds, we understand why she is there. She hasn’t had a happy life, with exception of the years with her daughter Leonine. Abandoned at birth, moving from foster home to foster home, she seeks solace in a marriage which isn’t a happy one.
A cast of characters cross Violette’s path and their stories are revealed as the novel progresses. Her missing husband Phillipe, his miserably mean spirited mother and father, her dearest friends Celia and Sasha, one of my favorite characters, the former caretaker of the cemetery who makes her laugh. Her life, though, will be changed forever when Julien Seul shows up at her door bringing with him the story of his mother Irene Fayolle, whose ashes he wishes to bury at the gravesite of a man buried there. The plot becomes a little more complicated as the stories entwine, and I won’t talk more about it here, other than to say, I was captivated. Each chapter begins with a poetic thought, too moving not to share a few :
“When we miss one person, everywhere becomes deserted.”
“There’ll always be someone missing to make my life smile: you.”
“Life is but a passage, let us at least scatter flowers on that passage.”
“You’re no longer where you were, but you’re everywhere that I am.”
I love when a translation is so beautifully rendered. It doesn’t always happen this way and sometimes I feel as though I miss out from not reading the story in its original language. This didn’t feel like a translation, so kudos to Hildegarde Serle, and of course to Valerie Perrin for this beautifully , affecting story of a character I will remember.
I received an advanced copy of this book Europa Editions through Edelweiss.
Rating: really liked it
Fresh Water For Flowers by Valérie Perrin, Hildegarde Serle (Translator), Sara Young (Narrator)
Fresh Water for Flowers is a story full of grief, death, leaving, and not being able to let go. Violette was an orphan from the moment of her birth. It was only when she took up with Phillipe, a gorgeous blond womanizer, and became pregnant, that she became part of a family. But almost from the time that Phillipe entered Violette's life, he was leaving her, until he finally was gone for good.
By then Violette works as a cemetery keeper and the cemetery is her home, the people there, dead and alive, her family. The present day part of the story takes place when Violette is about 50 and she is happy, in a way one can be happy despite a hollow place in one's heart that will never be filled. In some ways she is on hold until the day she dies. She's been left behind in more ways than one.
This story is so full of people, their sorrows and passions, their hopes and secrets. Love and longing plays a huge part in the story and the stories are told over a myriad of timelines. For the last 30 years Violette has had her cemetery, garden, cats, dogs, and the people that work there or visit regularly. This is her holding pattern and she doesn't expect anything more than what she has right now.
I struggled a bit with the constantly changing timelines but those timelines allow the mystery to unfold slowly. I might have been able to follow some parts of the story better if the past events were shown to us in chronological order but maybe the story would have lost some of it's magic if told that way. This story sometimes felt like a song, a fairy tale, a poem and it challenged me to keep up with it.
Published June 2nd 2020
Thank you to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for this ARC.
Rating: really liked it
A beautiful and moving tale of a woman who is a caretaker at a cemetery, living alone and keeping a diary of every funeral she has attended to. This is the moment in Violette's life when we meet her. Questions immediately appear: How did she find this unusual profession? What about her family? Why does she live in a relative isolation? And many more ... From the very beginning I had a feeling there is more to her life, and indeed there is.
Violette stole my heart completely. What she went through from her birth, childhood, adolescence and maturity did not leave me unmoved. I often just sat and listened to her quiet story and felt privileged to be the one she talked to.
The translation is brilliant, I would never guess this novel was written is French. And so is the narration. Real feast for my heart and mind.
Rating: really liked it
Valerie Perrin's translated novel is a pitch perfect meditation on life, death, love, marriage, motherhood, tragedy, loss, grief, and learning to live after the worst has happened. Violette Touissant is the reclusive cemetery keeper at Brancon-en-Chalon, a position she acquired after years working as a level crossing keeper. Her husband, Philippe, has abandoned her, her daily life consists of a small circle of colleagues and friends that she provides coffee and food for, the 3 grave diggers, Nono, Gaston and Elvis, the Luccini brothers, the undertakers, and Father Cedric Duras. The cemetery is maintained in a immaculate condition, with Violette growing a bountiful variety of vegetables, selling flowers, cleaning tombs, chatting to the dead, keeping records of the funerals of the dead, and looking after those who visit the cemetery.
Being at the centre of the dead puts Violette at the heart of the local community, life and death go hand in hand. However, the life she has become accustomed to begins to be upturned when she gets an unexpected visitor, a police detective from Marseille, Julien Seul, has been shocked by his recently dead mother's wish to have her ashes placed on the grave of well known lawyer, Gabriel Prudent. He had no idea his mother knew him at all, and Violette helps him with the rituals and process of his task. The narrative goes back and forth in time, as Violette's past is slowly revealed, a foundling raised in care and with foster parents, her low self esteem, the details of her relationship with the faithless Philippe that petered into one of indifference and silence, learning to read late as an adult, the joy of acquiring her first female friend, Celia, surviving unbearable grief with the support of Sasha, and the return of feelings that she thought were beyond her. Interspersed are journal entries of Julien's mother, Irene Fayolle, and her illicit life long love affair with Gabriel.
It took me a little while to become fully immersed in this heartbreaking and simultaneously life affirming story, but once I did, I was utterly entranced. My heart opened up to and embraced Violette, dealing with the challenging set of cards that life had dealt her, her compassion in her everyday life of trying to make life easier for the grieving, and the respect and reverence she extends to those beyond the grave. There is a complexity to all of the characters that make this such an unforgettable and rewarding experience, even Philippe has his own difficult family backstory and feelings of regrets that he cannot express. This is a beautifully written novel, emotionally affecting, and a pure delight to read. Highly recommended with bells on. Many thanks to Europa Editions for an ARC.
Rating: really liked it
Magnificent! I literally hugged this book and sighed when I finished.
This story is as exquisite as flowers that bloom year after year; season after season.
Violette is a caretaker of a cemetery in France. She has stories of almost all the graves she’s nurtured with love and grace over the last twenty years. She tells of lovers who Visit by night to avoid family and wives by day. Of women who come to visit and leave their stories of love and life with her.
The story is interspersed with her own tragedy of loss and regaining her strength to carry on.
A beautiful story of love, death, grief and hope.
A character to be cherished and remembered. Such beautiful language. I’ll hold this one close to my heart as it goes on my all time favourite list ❤️
5⭐️
Rating: really liked it
Sigh. Smile. Hold a breath. Dismiss the call. Turn the page with anticipation, sometimes with no idea what awaits. This is a beautiful literary novel and the translation from French by Hildegarde Serle seems superb.
Fresh Water for Flowers is a book that is too easy to spoil and I'm proud that as of this writing all of the top reviews are by GR Friends of mine and not one has a spoiler. Be careful, you want to go in knowing as little as possible. When the book opens we learn Violette is the caretaker of a cemetery and that her husband has disappeared. From Violette like from a river, many tributaries emerge. The plot intricate, the writing delicate. There are a lot of characters and with some the book goes back and forth in time. The book tells a pleasing number of stories that orbit the main one, and I was rapt throughout.
There are mysteries, major and minor. There's friendship, loneliness, betrayal, loyalty. There's frustration, adoration, indifference, violence, ennui, joy, so many feels in what for me was a page-turner. There's love and sex, love, and sex.
Sex when it intersects with love is written beautifully here. There are scenes where anticipation is palpable and scenes where lovers are in bed together for days. Perrin writes lovemaking that's sensuous, at times voluptuous. What sex she writes is visceral, and I was in awe that Perrin did it without ever being explicit. There's the feel of a finger tracing a body, rhythms and shudders and sweat, yet I can't recall mention of a single body part. I have no problem with explicit sex yet here I found less was more in a way that was, well, gratifying. Because this is realism there is, of course, love that's unhealthy --
I was more infected by him than in love with him-- unsatisfying, ruinous, that results in violence and misery.
It's a compact book with many characters that tells many sorts of tales and shows us many types of lives. From cradle to grave: ah yes, the grave. Death. Violette tends the monuments large and small with tender care, ensuring they're kept manicured. Sometimes she tends those who come to visit a grave. She brings the care to caretaker. There's a priest and Violette too comforts every soul that seeks it from her. An epitaph is at the top of every chapter.
Sweet butterfly, spread your lovely wings and go to his tomb to tell him I love him.
The days someone loves you, the weather is marvelous.
Death begins when no one can dream of you any longer.The themes of love and death merge most clearly in the little garden behind the caretaker's house. Violette's never gardened, knows nothing about it. Vivid and memorable are the scenes in which the man giving up the caretaker's job, who planted and loves the garden, gently instructs her, and when she's at work in the garden. She doesn't have a formal education so learning to grow plants is a source of pride and joy for her, as are the fruit of her labors and the vegetables, trees and flowers.
He taught me to turn it over in October, and then again in spring, depending on the weather. To watch out for earthworms, not to crush them, so they could “do their job.” He taught me to look at the sky and decide whether planting should be done in January or later, if I wanted to harvest in September. He explained to me that nature took its time...
Planting, sorting seedlings, pricking out, positioning stakes, hoeing, weeding, taking cuttings, tidying the avenues, both of us leaning toward the earth, hands in the earth, all the time. How I loved that first time. Hands in the earth, nose in the air, creating a link between the two. Learning that the one never went without the other. Returning two weeks after the first planting and seeing the transformation, approaching the seasons differently, the power of life.Perrin's descriptions here too are very well done; when Violette serves a freshly-picked tomato this reader could feel the juice dribbling down a chin. It's another form of sensuality. Touch is so important. Minds touching. Hands on the body, small fingers grasping larger ones. Hands in the soil, the feel of the fur of dogs and cats.
I hope to have tantalized (or at least interested) you. Fresh Water for Flowers is magnificent.
I wish I hadn't read it so I could read it anew.
And I wish I saw reviews by men in the U.S.! Why are so many of the men's reviews I've scrolled through written by men abroad? You're here for love of books, you live a life, you love and laugh and grieve, work and play. You have your stories. You love to read them too. You can read this book; it's a fine piece of literature. I'd like to see your reviews here. Fresh Water for Flowers deserves you.
Rating: really liked it
This book is guaranteed to move you— halfway through, I noticed how choked up I was.....and soon I was crying.
Slowly I was absorbing the depths of this -breathtaking - story.... multi-layered—a type of meditated trance - if you will - between life and death....and how I ( just one tiny person) - belonged to both: life and death in almost equal measure.
I was learning a subtle lesson from the intricate lush details - about how to live fully immersed with what so many others have kept silent.
Violette Toussaint was a cemetery caretaker in a small town in France: Bourgogne- Brancion-en-Chaplin cemetery. She had worked there for more than twenty years..
Violette had an ageless look about herself. She could pass for a 14-year-old or a 25-year-old.
...We meet the gravediggers: Nono, Gaston, and Elvis...
...We meet Violette’s dog: Elaine
...We meet the undertakers: The Lucchini brothers: Pierre, Paul, and Jacques. The Lucchini brothers, ( 38, 39, and 40), were the owners of the Brancion morgue.
...We meet the Priest: Father Cedric Duras
...We meet many visitors: one being a stranger - a local detective - who shows up at Violette’s door early one dark morning. Violette let the strange man into her house and served him coffee ( coffee was always ready to go)....she described her room ( the place she had lived 20 years):
The room that Violette stayed in, really belonged to everyone.
It was a small room with a kitchen-cum-living room. There were no photos on the wall or colorful tablecloths or couches— just lots of plywood and chairs to sit on. Nothing showy… Yes there was always a pot of coffee ready.
It was the room for “desperate cases, tears, confidences, anger, size, despair, and the laughter of the gravediggers”.
Violette’s bedroom was upstairs. She repainted it after her husband Philippe’s disappearance. No one had ever stepped inside her bedroom after he left.
.....There’s more backstory about Philippe Toussaint - their meeting, their short marriage - his handsomeness - his womanizing - and his disappearance.
Violette’s real home was out in the courtyard. She knew almost every dead person, their location, their death, everything.
She had a funny habit when any person visited her house on the grounds though.......(one that was felt deeper to me as the story unfolded)....
Violette never switched on the light in her place if someone came to visit.....but as soon as they would leave, (walk out the door), she replaced them with light, ...
.... an old habit of a child given up at birth.
This was such a heartfelt beautiful book... I’m still on the edge of tears as I sit here reflecting it.
I went back over my notes. I laughed and cried at the same time the second time re-reading gorgeous moments - scenes - in this book
My gosh....I have SUCH A THING for ‘Europa’, books, anyway....and this gem didn’t disappoint!
A couple more things to share - but I don’t want to spoil the actual story about Violette....and her LIFE....( her circumstances, history, people she meets, her gifts, or even too much about her charming unique character)....
but there are a couple of excerpts I can’t resist sharing....
The very beginning is soooo cool! I’ve read this 3 times....and each time...thought of new things:
“My closest neighbors don’t quake in their boots. They have no worries, don’t fall in love, don’t bite their nails, don’t believe in chance, make no promises, or noise, don’t have Social Security, don’t cry, don’t search for their keys, your glasses, the remote control, their children, happiness.”
“They don’t read, don’t pay taxes, don’t go on diets, don’t have preferences, don’t change their minds, don’t make their beds, don’t smoke, don’t write lists, don’t count to 10 before speaking. They have no one to stand in for them”.
“They’re not ass-kissers, ambitious, grudge-bearers, dandies, petty, generous, jealous, scruffy, clean, awesome, funny, addicted, stingy, cheerful, crafty, violent, lovers, whiners, hypocrites, gentle, tough, feeble, nasty, liars, thieves, gamblers, strivers, idlers, believers, perverts, optimists.
“They’re dead”,
“The only difference between them is in the wood of their coffins: pine or mahogany”.
Also....
.......sooooo beautiful are the epitaphs at the start of each chapter....
After reading this book - I went through the novel once more...just to read-read many of these powerful engravings....
Impossible not to cry when I read one after another after another
Here are a few:
“There’ll always be someone missing to make my life smile: you”.
“May your rest be as sweet as your heart was kind”.
“His beauty, his youth smiled upon the world in which he would have lived. Then from his hands fell the book of which he has read not a word”.
“Talking about you is making you exist, saying nothing would be forgetting you”.
“Soothe his rest with your sweetest singing”.
“Sleep, Nana, sleep, but may you still hear our childish laughter up there and highest Heaven”.
—— Speech for Marie Geant
“There’s something stronger than death, and that the presence of those absent in the memory of the living”.
“The day someone loves you, the weather’s
marvelous”.
“Fresh Water for Flowers is deeply affecting... with flowers “a bit like ladders up to heaven”.....
......written with stunning reserves of compassion, humor, and wisdom. Violette Toussaint is an extraordinary character— a woman of incredible heart and spirit who will remain in my memory for a long time.
Thank you Europa Editions, Netgalley, and Valérie Perrin
Rating: really liked it
"My present life is a present from heaven...As I say to myself every morning...I have been very unhappy, destroyed even...But since I've never had a taste for unhappiness, I decided it wouldn't last. Unhappiness had to stop someday".
Violette Trenet got off to a bad start. She was abandoned at birth and raised in a succession of foster homes. At seventeen, waitressing at a bar, she met Philippe Toussaint. "The first months of my life with Philippe, I was on a perpetual high...but...I think he was already cheating on me...he went for rides on his motorbike...Philippe only worked occasionally". Their daughter Leonine, born in 1986, brought Violette her greatest joy. Leonine amused her father Philippe for a few minutes but then he was off cruising on his motorbike.
In 1997, Violette and Philippe Toussaint arrived in Bourgogne to become the cemetery keepers at Brancion-en-Chalon Cemetery. "When it came to laziness, I'd won the lottery with [Philippe]". Violette was the sole cemetery keeper after Philippe became a police footnote, a "disappearance of concern".
Violette's cemetery was a very beautiful place. "I planted some pine trees...[it's]...all about caring for the dead who lie within it. It's about respecting them. And if they weren't respected in life, at least they are in death. [But] I'm sure plenty of bastards lie here...And anyhow, who hasn't been a bastard at least once in their life?"
How was the cemetery kept ship shape? There were three gravediggers: Nono,the most trusted, Gaston, a clumsy oaf, and Elvis, who couldn't read or write but knew the lyrics to every Elvis Presley tune. The Lucchini Brothers: Pierre, Paul and Jacques, were the undertakers. "Since Father Cedric Duras's arrival, many women...seem to have been struck by a divine revelation...I think I'm more confided in by those that pass through then Father Cedric is in his confessional. It's in my modest home and along my cemetery avenues that families let their words pour out".
Early morning daily gatherings, before the cemetery opened, provided an opportunity for Violette and her colleagues, her true friends, to share their experiences. How about the time Nono warned Gaston that the soil was crumbly this season, but Gaston tumbled into a grave face down. Elvis started singing...Face down on the street, in the ghetto, in the ghetto. Violette exclaims, "Sometimes, I feel as if I'm living with the Marx Brothers".
Through back stories, the reader learns of unspeakable tragedy and heartbreak, colorful anecdotes, infidelities and surprising liaisons. The multi-faceted characters are very engaging. Several mysteries abound. Julien Seul arrives at the cemetery to explore his mother's "cloudy" request. Perhaps "rotten to the core" Philippe is not what he seems. "Fresh Water for Flowers" by Valerie Perrin introduces the reader to Violette, a delightful narrator with a zest for life. Violette provides her "cemetery family" with food and drink and tends her garden and flowers. She could occasionally be seen as a "fluttering ghost" on a unicycle scaring teenagers who, with beer in hand, ran screaming into the night heading for the cemetery gates! A delightful tome I highly recommend.
Thank you Europa Editions and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: really liked it
I loved this story from the start.. the story of Violette who has been living on her own as a cemetery keeper in a small town in Bourgogne for many years. She has many regular visitors.. gravediggers, groundskeepers, and a priest to her lodge there on the cemetery grounds who are her colleagues but also her close friends.
Violette had been in an unhappy marriage that involved a tragic loss.. and also a job loss.. before this cemetery job and one day her husband took off on his motorcycle and has never returned.
There are a few other stories that branch out from Violet’s.. some that have to do with some of the people buried in her cemetery... one especially, that so moved me!
A story of love, loss and grief..and finding your way through the darkness!
Beautiful!
Thank you to Netgalley and Europa and especially the author for this ARC!
Rating: really liked it
This book is possibly the most layered novel I've ever read. Violette is the caretaker of a cemetery. She began life as an orphan, made a bad marriage at a young age, has experienced an unspeakable personal tragedy and has only 2 close friends. But that doesn't even begin to tell you what's between these pages. Life, death, sadness, joy, love and hate, people, both living and dead that are vividly brought to life. Music, literature, especially her French translation of John Irving's Cider House Rules, which she uses as a road map for her life. Gardening as a therapy, food and wine for comfort, friendships that can save lives, and more importantly, that can bring you back to life when you have lost all hope.
I laughed and cried in every chapter, started highlighting passages, then gave up when I saw there was something on every page. It took a long time for me to read because I had to pause often to process events and feelings. Suffice it to say that this was so beautifully written that I'm ready to become a cemetery caretaker myself, using Violette as a role model.
Rating: really liked it
1.9 "Celine Dion has laryngytis" stars !!
Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Europa editions. This was originally published in French in 2018. This English edition was released in July 2020.
Not since Patchett's Bel Canto have I been more disappointed in a novel. I so looked forward to this novel probably as much as I did the Patchett. I read a number of really positive and glowing reviews from GR friends and a few IRL friends (all women) adored this one too.
I started and at 8 percent stated "I both like and don't like this thus far". I felt quite ambivalent at this point. I really liked the sketch of Violette (although I never did believe her to be a real life flesh like being but more a romantic muse) I then had a number of really good cries over the next few chapters and I had such hope for this book. Not that I ever found it well written but some of it was charming, whimsical, ridiculously sentimental. At 22 percent I stated "This book has won me over but is absolutely devastating me over and fuckin over and fuckin over again.
I can't bear it sometimes !"
From here the book begins a descent downwards and downwards and downwards. The book is mostly maudlin, unbelievable, contrived, ridiculously ridiculous. Even when there are lovely moments I am left unmoved, annoyed due to the histrionics, the caricatures, the constant coincidences, the stereotypes.
At 62 percent I write "This may be the most disappointing book I read this year!" I truly cannot imagine that I will read a more disappointing novel this year. Disappointing novels are worse than the stinkers because they break your heart for all the wrong reasons. You see the potential and wish they could be the novel that you know it could be with the right editor and plenty of work thrown into it.
At 77 percent I write "I can't drag this one out anymore. I hope to finish this today or tomorrow and focus only on this read" My heart is broken (truly) for all the wrong reasons.
At 92 percent I scream ""I can't wait to be done with this!" I am more than annoyed now, I'm upset at what a cop out the big reveal is. I am angry at how superficially caricaturish (my own word) that everybody but Violette is. She has a bit of complexity while the rest are cartoons out of Grade C French Soap Operas that are dubbed in Cockney accents where the voices and lips don't match.
There were a few moments of real sublime beauty where I will rate this book 3.5 stars (Generously I will say that this is 20 percent of the book) and the remaining 80 percent I will give a charitable 1.5 stars.
Celine darling why did you go on singing with your laryngitis ? Huh ?
Rating: really liked it
’My name is Violette Toussaint. I was a level-crossping keeper, now I’m a cemetery keeper.’ She began her life with a mother that did not want her, and abandoned her. As a newborn, she never uttered a sound, and so they filled out the forms declaring her deceased before she took her first breath. Once upon a time she married, and had a child, but now lives alone. No longer as young as she once was, she devotes her time to those who reside inside the gates of the cemetery where she lives, even if they no longer have that luxury.
Violette shared the job of the cemetery caretaker, if not in actual caretaking with her husband, Philippe Toussaint, who was a man too lazy to do much more than play video games or ride off on his motorcycle while Violette did the work. However, Philippe was not a man too attached to home or his wife for very long, so this is really Violette’s story, and while it takes place in a somewhat melancholy setting, the story is so beautifully written that I found myself highlighting so many passages from the first page on. Passages that are often heartbreaking, but at the same time so lovely, meaningful, and that build upon the layers of the story previously created.
There are twists and turns to this story that are better left for the reader to discover, but, for me, it was the charm that Violette brings to this story as its narrator that kept me completely engaged and savoring every word from the first one to the last.
Published: Jul 07 2020
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Europa Editions
Rating: really liked it
4.5⭐️
Fresh Water for Flowers by Valerie Perrin is a moving novel of love, loss , grief and life. The protagonist Violette is a cemetery keeper who lives alone in a house on the premises of the cemetery she looks after. Abandoned by her husband years ago she spends her days taking great care of the cemetery , growing flowers , cleaning headstones , reading epitaphs and meeting people to whom she provides comfort in their times of bereavement and distress.
”My present life is a present from heaven. As I say to myself every morning, when I open my eyes.”In her, the author paints a portrait of a woman whose past is marked by much loss and personal tragedy but who lives her life with dignity and grace, forging friendships with the people she works with and those who come to grieve .
"For a woman like me, not feeling compassion would be like being an astronaut, a surgeon, a volcanologist, or a geneticist. Not part of my planet, or my skill set.”The novel does not only tell Violette’s story but also the stories of the different people in her life- not only her personal relationships but those she meets in the course of her work and even those the graves of whom she tends - their loves, their lives and their secrets. The author introduces us to an interesting mix of characters (both alive and deceased) whose stories become a part of Violette’s own.
This is a slow paced novel full of heart and wisdom. This is not a quick read and it does take a little time to get fully invested in the story .But it is a poignant and emotional novel that leaves a lasting impression.
Rating: really liked it
I have just finished reading Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin, translated from the French by Hildegarde Serle and I wish I had the time to start reading it all over again. This is the most beautiful book to come out of my TBR pile this year. Violette Toussaint lives in a little house in a cemetery in Bourgogne in France. She is the caretaker of this cemetery and she tends it with love and pride. Her world revolves around the tending of the graves and the care of the aggrieved. Her friends are the people who cross her path there. So far, it doesn’t seem like much of a story but it is so lyrical, so touching, so sad and so rewarding. This is the life of a young woman who goes through some of life’s most tragic events and attempts to keep her head and her heart in the right place throughout. It is a Sunday afternoon kind of read. I recommend it to all. Thank you to Europa Editions and NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: really liked it
4.5 starsViolette Trenet, born to a mother who doesn't want her, is thought to be stillborn until she unexpectedly turns pink and takes a breath. Violette then grows up in a series of indifferent foster homes, and by the age of 17, is living in a hostel and working as a bartender.
It's then that Violette meets gorgeous, golden-haired twentysomething Phillipe Toussaint and instantly falls in love.
Violette and Philippe are soon living in a small house in a French town, working as level crossing keepers.
In reality, this means that Violette operates the gates about 15 times a day while Philippe plays videogames, rides his motorcycle, and hooks up with other women.
Moreover, Philippe contributes nothing to the household, and Violette scrimps and saves to pay bills, buy food, purchase household goods, buy clothes, etc.
When the level crossing is automated and the couple lose their jobs, Philippe is dismayed by the thought of going to work.
But Violette finds an advertisement for cemetery keepers in Bourgogne, which comes with an all-expenses-paid house, and the couple soon have new employment. Violette again does all the work while Philippe plays games, rides his bike, and philanders - but Violette is content with her home and vegetable garden.
Then one day Philippe leaves for good, without even a goodbye.
Violette is happy working in the graveyard. She opens the gates in the morning and closes them in the evening; attends the interments and transcribes the eulogies into her journal; offers refreshments to - and chats with - the people who come to visit their loved ones; grows and sells flowers; takes care of graves when family members are away; looks after pets who arrive with their deceased owners and never leave; deals with teenagers who sneak into the cemetery at night (this is a hoot!); and more.
Violette also likes the people she works with: the gravediggers/caretakers - Nono; Gaston; and Elvis; the undertakers - Pierre, Paul and Jacques Lucchini; and the priest - Father Cedric Duras. These colleagues frequently drop into Violette's house, for a cup of coffee and a chat.
Violette's co-workers are a colorful bunch, and we read about clumsy Gaston falling into an open grave; Elvis singing his namesake's songs; handsome Father Duras inspiring ladies to come to church; reliable Nono helping out when Violette is away; the undertakers fretting when business is bad; and more. Violette also talks about people buried in the cemetery, in whose lives she takes an interest.
The book alternates back and forth between the past and the present, and we slowly learn about the joys and sorrows in Violette's life. We read about Violette's happiness when her daughter Leonine is born.....
.....and Leonine becoming a beautiful blonde sprite who loves magic.
We also learn about Violette's overbearing mother-in-law, who raises her son to be a selfish narcissist;
a cemetery keeper called Sasha, who helps Violette through dark times;
a woman named Celia, who becomes Violette's cherished confidante; and more.
One of Violette's closest relationships begins when she's middle-aged. A handsome police detective called Julien Seul knocks on Violette's door and tells her that his mother Irene just died.
Instead of being buried with her husband, Irene left instructions to inter her with a man named Gabriel Prudent, who's in Violette's cemetery. Julien probes the relationship between Irene and Gabriel, and in Scheherazade-like fashion, slowly spins out the tale for Violette.....so he can keep seeing her.
The illicit romance between Irene and Gabriel is revealed bit by bit, as is the growing rapport between Violette, Julien, and Julien's seven-year-old son Nathan.
There's also a mysterious tragedy in the story, and exploring this event reveals dark secrets as well as hidden depths.
The story begins in a leisurely fashion, then picks up speed and becomes a page turner. This is a beautifully written book about friendship, companionship, love, grief.....and the large and small lives that make up humanity. Highly recommended.
Thanks to Netgalley, Valérie Perrin, and Europa Editions for a copy of the book.
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