Title: FRESH WATER FOR FLOWERS
Expected publication: 7 July 2020
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 all the stars!
“A mother’s love is a treasure that God gives only once.”
Book Description:
Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small
town in Bourgogne. Random visitors, regulars, and, most notably, her
colleagues—three gravediggers, three groundskeepers, and a priest—visit her as
often as possible to warm themselves in her lodge, where laughter,
companionship, and occasional tears mix with the coffee that she offers them.
Her daily life is lived to the rhythms of their hilarious and touching
confidences.
Violette’s routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of a man—Julien Sole, local police chief—who insists on depositing the ashes of his recently departed mother on the gravesite of a complete stranger. It soon becomes clear that the grave Julien is looking for belongs to his mother’s one-time lover, and that his mother’s story of clandestine love is intertwined with Violette’s own secret past.
Violette’s routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of a man—Julien Sole, local police chief—who insists on depositing the ashes of his recently departed mother on the gravesite of a complete stranger. It soon becomes clear that the grave Julien is looking for belongs to his mother’s one-time lover, and that his mother’s story of clandestine love is intertwined with Violette’s own secret past.
What attracted me to this book:
“Heartwarming”, “tender”, “tugs on the heartstrings” are
some of the descriptions that came with this book, and it was exactly the kind
of story I felt I needed at the time to escape into. Also, who doesn’t like
some armchair travel to rural France, especially with a setting as intriguing
as a small French cemetery?
My musings:
OMG this book! As I sat there, sobbing loudly and with tears
and snot pouring down my face, I felt I could never do this story justice with
my review. FRESH WATER FOR FLOWERS was both the saddest and the most beautiful
book I have read in years, and one that utterly captured my heart and soul. It
broke my heart a thousand times over and then comforted me with hope, and
Violette’s spirit to keep going, and keep loving. I needed to sit with the
story and my own emotions for a while before I could adequately express the way
I felt about it.
Violette is probably one of the most beautiful and
courageous fictional characters I have ever encountered. An orphan growing up
in a children’s home, married as a young teen to a much older man and then a teenage
mother, she is so starved for love and yet so resilient. She was just such a
beautiful soul, and my heart broke for her many times over as she endures one
tragedy after another and still doesn’t lose that inner flame that shines out
of the book and warmed my soul. And even though Violette was definitely the
star of the story, each and every character in this book was compelling and
well drawn with all their flaws and human-ness. There are many different
threads wrapped up into Violette’s story, and I loved them all! Even Phillippe,
Violette’s husband who treated her so badly at times, was compelling in his own
right, and I could not hate him, as much as I wanted to.
Four full pages of quotes in my reading journal show how
much FRESH WATER FOR FLOWERS spoke to me. I can’t adequately describe here how
much I loved this book. I haven’t ugly cried whilst reading for a long time,
but this story made me wail so loudly that my dog crawled under the bed in
fright and I had to take anti-histamines to ease the redness and swelling of my
eyes before being able to go to work. As a trigger warning: the author tackles
one of life’s most tragic events as a pivotal event of her novel. I don’t want
to give spoilers, but if you are anything like me, the sense of foreboding and
mounting dread warned me that something terrible was coming. And yet, when I
reflect on the book, it filled me with hope, and warmth, and love for the human
spirit like only few books can. I can see why FRESH WATER FOR FLOWERS was a
number one bestseller in France, and its translated version, which preserved
all its original French charm, deserves to rocket to the bestseller list here
as well.
Summary:
In summary, FRESH WATER FOR FLOWERS was the type of book
that doesn’t come along very often – a story that starts a little flame in the
very centre of your heart and turns into a raging inferno of emotion. Despite
making me cry, it filled me with love and hope and a sense that these
characters will live on in my heart for a long time to come. It was both one of
the saddest and most beautiful books I have ever read, and I cannot recommend
it highly enough. Brilliant!
Thank
you to Edelweiss and Europa for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
I concur on all levels, great book, inspiring main character, wonderful supporting characters, fully human, always flawed. I just finished copying many of the quotes that preceed each chapter, and I just scribbled not 4, but 5 pages of notable ones!
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