Her daily life is lived to the rhythms of the hilarious and touching confidences of random visitors and her colleagues—three gravediggers, three groundskeepers, and a priest.

If you enjoy character-driven stories about betrayal, loss, hope, and love, then this story is for you.You are never quite sure where this book is heading, but you want to go there nonetheless You think that you know the characters and that they know each other, but you don’t , and neither do they. Her English-language debut, Fresh Water for Flowers (Europa, 2020) won the Maison de la Presse Prize, the Paperback Readers Prize, and was named a 2020 ABA Indies Introduce and Indie Next List title. Fresh Water For Flowers by Valérie Perrin will provide a reader with many moments of comfort, bliss, and a real reading delight. There are some unexpected twists and turns as the story follows the caretaker’s life before and during her time tending flowers amongst the tombstones.

Valérie Perrin recorreu a todos os géneros literários para conseguir encher um número excessivo de páginas: romance, diário, mistério, conto de fadas, discursos fúnebres, epígrafes, fazendo até uma incursão muito subtil à autobiografia. It's then that Violette meets gorgeous, golden-haired twentysomething Phillipe Toussaint and instantly falls in love. I am in awe of protagonist Violette’s endurance, her steadfast resolve in soldering on, in the face of disappointment and loss. There are also so many passages throughout the book that I just had to highlight, but more so passages that made me pause and reflect over so many times throughout the entire story.In 1997, Violette and Philippe Toussaint arrived in Bourgogne to become the cemetery keepers at Brancion-en-Chalon Cemetery. This is a beautiful literary novel and the translation from French by Hildegarde Serle seems superb. Valerie Perrin begins her story when Violette is the caretaker at a small graveyard in Bourgogne, a tiny French village. She records every one in her notebook: the weather, the coffin, the flowers, the family and friends, the speeches. Multi-layered, full of depth, and handling the concept of death and all that surrounds it so well, this book really is something special.