Fresh Water for Flowers

As you might guess from my own book, I’m fascinated by underdog stories.

In this sparkling tale where mysteries unfold and gather force, a young French woman is a hero, a most unlikely one. Violette lives in a small-town cemetery where she serves as caretaker. There she devotes herself to tending the flowers brought to gravesites by visitors, and, in a way, she tends to the visitors as well.

As I came to admire Violette, I wondered about her past. How did she end up working in a cemetery? Why did her husband vanish? Why is this particular cemetery so… show more.

Exciting, thrilling, and full of surprises as any detective story, but with the depth and colour of human beings as in a classic novel.

It was impossible to put down the book once I started. When finished, it left a strong urge to visit all the places mentioned in the book in the hope of finding something of the unbending spirit from the characters described so vividly by this brilliant author.

I love books where I’m captivated by both the language and the characters, as I am in this startling novel told through the eyes of Violette Toussaint, the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Violette says there are two confessionals in the town, one in the church, the other in her cottage, and I am totally entranced by the stories she hears and what she divulges about her own surprising past. Perrin’s story is magical.