Fresh Water for Flowers

May 25, 2020
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.