Saturday 20 June 2020

Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin


Fresh Water for Flowers

by Valérie Perrin 

translated from the French by Hildegarde Serle

A review



Violette Toussaint is the caretaker of the cemetery at Brancion-en-Chalon.  She lives alone in a small house on the cemetery grounds, a haven for visitors often racked by grief, to whom Violette offers warmth, solace… and tea.  Violette’s family are the pets she keeps and her regular colleagues-of-sort – the three gravediggers, Nono, Gaston, and Elvis;  the three undertakers, Pierre, Paul, and Jacques (also known as the Lucchini brothers) and Father Cédric Duras, who officiates at most of the funerals in this largely Catholic area.

Violette is elegant, suave, sophisticated.  But just as her dark “winter” coats often cover colourful “summer” clothing, Violette has a hidden history which has led her, via several winding roads, to this little village in Bourgogne.   We learn that Violette has reinvented herself, setting off from a childhood in fostering and surviving a painful marriage before settling down as the lady of the cemetery.   

The narration, largely in the likeable voice of Violette, alternates between her present experiences and her past life.  But then matters start becoming complicated. One day, a police officer named Julien Seul, turns up at Violette’s door. His mother has left instructions that her ashes be laid on the tomb of a distinguished lawyer in the cemetery, revealing, after her death, a passionate clandestine affair.  Violette helps Julien to come to terms with this discovery.  But Julien’s arrival on the scene also rakes up a tragic mystery – the grief-shaped core of Violette’s past.
  
Antonio D’Orrico, writing in Il Corriere della Sera described Fresh Water for Flowers as the “most beautiful novel in the world”.  I am generally loath to heap such unreserved praise on any book, because I’m aware how much depends on the reader’s taste.  But I came across a particular passage in this book which sums up what I felt when I finished the novel:

I close Irène’s journal with a heavy heart. The way one closes a novel one has fallen in love with. A novel that’s a friend from whom it’s hard to part, because one wants it close by, in arm’s reach.

To me, Fresh Water for Flowers is one of those novels. It’s too early to say whether it will prove to be a memorable one and it might soon be replaced in my fickle affections. But, at least for its duration, it made me want to return to its fictional world and ensconce myself between its pages.   The various narrative strands, including the rather unexpected introduction of a “mystery story” element around half the way through, engaged my interest.    But what I possibly found more engaging is the style, the surprisingly effective mix of pathos and humour, tragedy and hope, laced with more than a dose of romance.  The titles of each of the short chapters, evidently inspired by funerary epigraphs, more often than not provide an oblique commentary on the content of the chapter.  

Perrin is a screenwriter and I can easily imagine the novel and its witty dialogue being turned into a quintessentially French movie, with a central character played by Juliette Binoche or Audrey Tautou, and a supporting cast of bantering, quirky characters.   The book even suggests its own soundtrack, with various references to French songs and occasional snatches of Bach and Chopin.  It is, in fact, a very “sensual” novel, not just in the sense of being about passion, but because of its assault on the senses – its passages are rich in colours, sounds, flavours, fragrances.

This marks Valérie Perrin’s English debut. Hildegarde Serle deserves praise for her translation, which reads effortlessly and musically, and makes one forget that the novel was originally in a very different language.

Kindle Edition400 pages
Expected publication: July 7th 2020 by Europa Editions 
(first published February 28th 2018 as "Changer l'eau des fleurs")

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