This book is a literary phenomenon, unique in its genre. It’s the complex story of a woman, Violette Toussaint, with a troubled past and a mystery affecting her life. By chance she becomes the guardian of a small cemetery in Burgundy (France). She’s alone there for years and through her way to tell what happens when the gate is closed we discover a second life inside this – usually – scary place. Behind each tomb there are stories. Violette changes water to the flowers, getting to know many aspects between life and death. But her life is not complete, a sad story of the past comes back together with an unexpected love. This book is open to many interpretations, it raises different feelings, not necessarily sad, masterfully written, it has the capacity to make us reflect about a universal world which can start from “death” into a new perspective of the lives of everyone. To be read, at least, once in life.
Biography of the writer
Valérie Perrin was born on 19 January 1967.
Her meeting with Claude Lelouch in 2006 kick-started her film career as a set photographer and then as co-writer of the director’s latest films, but it is mainly her novels that have made her known to the general public.
In 2015, her first novel, The Notebook of Lost Love (Les Oubliés du dimanche), was released, which received 13 awards, including Prix du premier roman de Chambéry 2016, le prix Chronos 2016, le Choix des libraires 2018 and was translated in Italy in 2016 (reaching in September 2020 the third place of the foreign fiction ranking thanks to the success of her next book[3]) and in Germany in 2017.
MORE INFO ABOUT THE WRITER AND HER BOOKS
His second novel Changing the water to the flowers (Changer l’eau des fleurs), published in 2018, also received several awards including the prix Maison de la Presse, which rewards a work written in French for the general public; for the jury, it is ‘a sensitive novel, a book that moves from laughter to tears with funny and endearing characters’. For Libération Next, despite a cover and title considered a little simple, ‘we get caught up in this whirlwind of intersecting stories, with the cemetery as the protagonist, whose lush, flowering garden signifies hope’. In 2019, it ranked 6th on the GFK/Weekly Books Top 10 bestselling books of the year list. In Italy, the translation of the novel was a publishing case, arriving after more than a year at the top of the general ranking, with about 9 000 copies sold in one week and 180 000 copies, as of September 2020, since its release.
Works
1) (FR) Les Oubliés du dimanche, Albin Michel, May 2015 (ENG: The notebook of lost love),
2) (FR) Changer l’eau des fleurs, Albin Michel, 28 February 2018 (ENGL: Changing water to the flowers)
3) (FR) Trois, Albin Michel, 31 March 2021 (ENGL: Three)
THE STRUCTURE OF THIS BOOK
The structure of the novel is layered on several narrative levels: in addition to the intersection of past and present, there is also an interweaving of lives, one linked to the other, beautifully told. Each chapter is introduced by a funerary epigraph, which acts almost as a metatext, explaining how in the end the words we choose to tell who our loved ones were are always too few, are not enough, leave us with deep doubts.
We are so much more, we are what we have never told anyone, we are made up of summers and winters, like the private, colourful wardrobe Violette wears in her evening summers, and the winter wardrobe dedicated to the daily mission of consoling those who have lost someone. In the end, we will discover, Violette too lives in conflict, is bewitched by what she wants to see, fails to understand many of the most important people in her life and makes constant changes.
In the picture here left the author in Brescia, at the Einaudi library during her promotional tour.
Source of the text above: https://www.criticaletteraria.org/2019/09/cambiare-lacqua-ai-fiori-valerie-perrin.html
My personal “journey” while reading this book
This book trailer comes 2 years after I read the book. It has been a long “emotional process” for me, not a simple book reading activity. Usually I decide which books to read and I love going to libraries, having all the books in front of me, touching them, reading the summaries and coming home with a bag full of new adventures. This time, the occasion has been more than unique and special: I received the suggestion to meet Valerie Perrin as a writer in 2020 from my friend Annarita Bini, President of “Smart Lab Europe” Association of Pescara. It was covid time, we were all closed and worried, sad and with an uncertain future. The association started a series of meetings online for readers, 100% women. This book was the first one to be read by everyone and for me it was one of the hardest periods of my life. My grandmother Virginia died of covid in 3 days and I was very far from home. Italy was divided and we couldn’t move from home. We were closed and isolated. I had many people in my family in the North of Italy sick and affected by the pandemic. I received the news about her death on 20/03/2020 around 3 pm and when I attended this meeting afterwards it was hard to decide to read a book based in a cemetery. I’m very emotional and this book goes straight to touch feelings and emotions of everyone.
I read it all in one breath, totally immersed in the story.
After reading it, it remained the best book on my personal list until now. It took me time to create the book trailer for many reasons, also because the topic is not that easy and sometimes deep feelings are hard to express.
I hope you like it, enjoy watching it. Erika Gerardini, JUMP Team!
Book Trailer: Changing water to the flowers book trailer -Valerie Perrin
