Fresh Water for Flowers
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF SUMMER 2021
A 2020 INDIES INTRODUCE & INDIE NEXT LIST PICK
A #1 international best-seller, Fresh Water for Flowers is an intimately told story about a woman who defiantly believes in happiness, despite it all.
Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Her life is lived to the predictable rhythms of the often funny, always moving confidences that casual mourners, regular visitors, and sundry colleagues share with her. Violette’s routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of Julien Sole—local police chief—who has come to scatter the ashes of his recently deceased mother on the gravesite of a complete stranger. It soon becomes clear that Julien’s inexplicable gesture is intertwined with Violette’s own complicated past.
“Melancholic and yet ebullient… An appealing indulgence in nature, food and drink, and, above all, friendships.”—The Guardian
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Violette Toussaint is a lonely and compassionate woman, and the caretaker of a village cemetery in Bourgogne, France. How she came to be living among the dead is the central question of this lovely novel, which unfolds in short, dreamy chapters. Debut author Valérie Perrin is a photographer and screenwriter, which makes perfect sense when you read her evocative prose. She gives you a vivid sense of Violette’s surroundings and tells the stories of the people buried in her graveyard with sharp focus mixed with quirky creativity. Fresh Water for Flowers also draws us into a love story that shows that broken hearts can be mended.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Perrin's English-language debut is a tender and poignant exploration of love, loss, and redemption. Violette Toussaint, a middle-aged cemetery keeper, narrates the events that lead up to her husband leaving her. An orphan who survived a chaotic childhood, Violette taught herself to read and married the well-off, older Phillipe Toussaint in 1986, when Violette was 18. After a year, Violette grows distant after she senses Phillipe's infidelity. When their jobs on the railway become automated, they move to Brancion-en-Chalon to become cemetery keepers. After a month, Phillipe leaves and doesn't return, leaving Violette to develop a pleasant routine entertaining visitors with food and wine in the cemetery's bucolic lodge. When Julien Seul, a detective, shows up to bury his mother, Violette is unnerved by how much he knows about her life. Perrin plaits the novel with the complex backstories of Violette, Phillipe, Julien, and Julien's mother and her lover. While the storylines sometimes feel as if they're competing with one another and tamp down the tension, Perrin keeps the reader engaged with a gradual payout of secrets that each character tries to protect. Perrin is adept at creating a flawed, amiable cast, and Violette is a delightfully engaging narrator. This enchanting indulgence in nature, drink, food, and friends is worth a look.
Customer Reviews
Beautifully written
This story was very sensual. Her prose was delicate and heartfelt. The cemetery plays a huge role in the story and is a dichotomy of death and life.
Wonderful, wonderful book.
This book is a testament to hope and the beauty of friendship and family.
Beautiful story
Beautifully written and translated story about finding the strength to carry on to find friendship and hope in a very unlikely place after experiencing a horrific loss