One of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read.

“My name is Violette Toussaint. I was a level-crossing keeper, now I’m a cemetery keeper”. When I first read these opening words, I wondered what I’d let myself in for. How could an author manage to write 476 pages about Violette’s two occupations? Through beautiful, poetic descriptions, large doses of humour and many, many tears shed as I followed the story.

Violette married Philippe when she was very young. He was a ne’er do well. She knew from the beginning that he had many mistresses and would often disappear for months at a time.

Violette’s life changed when her daughter Léonine was born. She, as an orphan brought up in care, swore that her daughter would never know the horror of being abandoned.

Philippe’s parents – particularly his mother, treated Violette with disdain. Even refusing to acknowledge Léonine’s name – instead, they insisted on calling her Catherine, “Catherine is a much prettier name.” claimed Mother Toussaint. The relationship with her inlaws never improved – and Violette failed to stop them from not only visiting her daughter but taking her on holiday with them.

Violette only has one true female friend, Célia. She’d met Célia when the train she and her granddaughter were travelling in, had been forced by a strike to stop at the crossing Violette manned. Thanks to Violette’s kindness – taking her into her home until the trains resumed, Célia insisted that Violette and Léonine spend their summer holidays at her chalet in the Calanque de Sormiou. These holidays, without Philippe, were the happiest times of Violette’s life.

Tragedy struck when Léonine was seven. It changed Violette’s life forever.

It was after this tragedy that Violette met Sasha, the cemetery keeper at Brancion. He taught Violette how to live again and survive her terrible loss. Violette and Philippe took over from him as the cemetery keepers when he retired. Philippe was meant to work alongside Violette at the graveyard but one day without saying anything went for a motorbike ride and never returned.

When Julien Seul, a detective, arrived at her door to discuss laying his mother’s ashes on one of the graves in the graveyard they have an immediate but somewhat awkward connection. Not only does he ask for Violette’s advice on the eulogy for his mother, but he also gave his mother’s journal to Violette to read. This journal is an integral part of the story.

I can’t find sufficient words to describe this novel, superbly translated from French into English by Hildegarde Serle. Violette is a beautiful, strong, resourceful woman. I’ve come to love her, and she will live long in my heart. Then there are others like the three gravediggers Nono, Gaston and Elvis together with Father Cédric Duras made me laugh out loud and realise that humour while working with the dead is very much alive.

I usually panic when I see that a book is over 350 pages. However, this novel could have carried on for another 1,000 pages, and I wouldn’t have grown bored. It’s filled with love, sorrow, tragedy, laughter, beautiful, vibrant characters and lots of gardening tips—a truly epic read.

Rony

Elite Reviewing Group received a copy of the book to review.

Fresh Water for Flowers is one of those stories that will stay with me for a long while. Beautifully written, full of emotions, and packed with great characters, this story captivated me from the beginning. A character driven tale of love, loss, and hope with a mixture of mystery that slowly develops while exploring deepest human emotions, wants, and steps to recovery from the loss of a loved one. And even though this story is heartbreaking at times, I was left with happy and positive feelings and a quiet contentment after reading its last page.

Thank you NetGalley, Europa Editions, and the author for providing me with an ARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

An atmospheric and enthralling read, well written and poetic.
I loved what I read and it's highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Life can be ugly, it's important to find place where you matter. 💜

“Fresh water for Flowers” by Valérie Perrin.

This book... This book has made me cry, rise my brow, smile, hate, love, feel compassion, feel vast spectre of emotions. This book is about life, death, regrets, it’s about people living in their own bubble of tragedy and ways they deal with it. It shows people that we are afraid the most, are often the nicest people. It shows all the ugly aspects of love, need, lust. It’s a story about friendship, true friendship without boundaries, where friend is the only person who can get you out of the abyss of your own darkness.

🥀 The plot of the story: Violette has been alone all her life, her parents left her at her birth, adoption families were turning away from her. One day she meets Philippe Toussaint, and he changes her life, she gets loved first time, but is it love? Violette ends up a cemetery keeper, where first time in her life she finds peace within herself until one day local police chef Julien, he’s looking for a grave of a man that turns out to be his mother’s one time lover. And his mother’s covert love story is twined with Violette’s secret past.

It’s an addictive book, once you start you can’t out it down. Author is keeping intrigue revealing one thing at the time. I haven’t read a book that would cause so many emotions for a very long time...

I would recommend this book to everyone. Because I believe that everyone could find something in there that would hook them up. Love story? Detective? Crime? Drama?

🌱 It’s definitely 5/5 🌟. No wonder this book has been number one in France. It’s brilliant!

Thank you Netgalley and Europa editions for this ARC on exchange for my honest opinion.

'Fresh Water for Flowers' was a beautiful and original take on grief.

While the story is tragic in many facets, it shows how far reaching and complicated death can be and the hope that can be renewed when working towards moving forward with one's life after tragedy. The book weaves into a more complicated web as it moves forward, moving back and forth to give more context to the characters and their actions, especially where it comes to husband Philippe. Violette was a well written character who's handling of her life, loss and growth is much like the flowers she grows. She blooms.

Thank you to NetGalley and Europa Editions for offering this book to me in exchange for an honest review.

"My present life is a present from heaven...As I say to myself every morning...I have been very unhappy, destroyed even...But since I've never had a taste for unhappiness, I decided it wouldn't last. Unhappiness had to stop someday".

Violette Trenet got off to a bad start. She was abandoned at birth and raised in a succession of foster homes. At seventeen, waitressing at a bar, she met Philippe Toussaint. "The first months of my life with Philippe, I was on a perpetual high...but...I think he was already cheating on me...he went for rides on his motorbike...Philippe only worked occasionally". Their daughter Leonine, born in 1986, brought Violette her greatest joy. Leonine amused her father Philippe for a few minutes but then he was off cruising on his motorbike.

In 1997, Violette and Philippe Toussaint arrived in Bourgogne to become the cemetery keepers at Brancion-en-Chalon Cemetery. "When it came to laziness, I'd won the lottery with [Philippe]". Violette was the sole cemetery keeper after Philippe became a police footnote, a "disappearance of concern".

Violette's cemetery was a very beautiful place. "I planted some pine trees...[it's]...all about caring for the dead who lie within it. It's about respecting them. And if they weren't respected in life, at least they are in death. [But] I'm sure plenty of bastards lie here...And anyhow, who hasn't been a bastard at least once in their life?"

How was the cemetery kept ship shape? There were three gravediggers: Nono,the most trusted, Gaston, a clumsy oaf, and Elvis, who couldn't read or write but knew the lyrics to every Elvis Presley tune. The Lucchini Brothers: Pierre, Paul and Jacques, were the undertakers. "Since Father Cedric Duras's arrival, many women...seem to have been struck by a divine revelation...I think I'm more confided in by those that pass through then Father Cedric is in his confessional. It's in my modest home and along my cemetery avenues that families let their words pour out".

Early morning daily gatherings, before the cemetery opened, provided an opportunity for Violette and her colleagues, her true friends, to share their experiences. How about the time Nono warned Gaston that the soil was crumbly this season, but Gaston tumbled into a grave face down. Elvis started singing...Face down on the street, in the ghetto, in the ghetto. Violette exclaims, "Sometimes, I feel as if I'm living with the Marx Brothers".

Through back stories, the reader learns of unspeakable tragedy and heartbreak, colorful anecdotes, infidelities and surprising liaisons. The multi-faceted characters are very engaging. Several mysteries abound. Julien Seul arrives at the cemetery to explore his mother's "cloudy" request. Perhaps "rotten to the core" Philippe is not what he seems. "Fresh Water for Flowers" by Valerie Perrin introduces the reader to Violette, a delightful narrator with a zest for life. Violette provides her "cemetery family" with food and drink and tends her garden and flowers. She could occasionally be seen as a "fluttering ghost" on a unicycle scaring teenagers who, with beer in hand, ran screaming into the night heading for the cemetery gates! A delightful tome I highly recommend.

Thank you Europa Editions and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

’My name is Violette Toussaint. I was a level-crossping keeper, now I’m a cemetery keeper.’

She began her life with a mother that did not want her, and abandoned her. As a newborn, she never uttered a sound, and so they filled out the forms declaring her deceased before she took her first breath. Once upon a time she married, and had a child, but now lives alone. No longer as young as she once was, she devotes her time to those who reside inside the gates of the cemetery where she lives, even if they no longer have that luxury.

Violette shared the job of the cemetery caretaker, if not in actual caretaking with her husband, Philippe Toussaint, who was a man too lazy to do much more than play video games or ride off on his motorcycle while Violette did the work. However, Philippe was not a man too attached to home or his wife for very long, so this is really Violette’s story, and while it takes place in a somewhat melancholy setting, the story is so beautifully written that I found myself highlighting so many passages from the first page on. Passages that are often heartbreaking, but at the same time so lovely, meaningful, and that build upon the layers of the story previously created.

There are twists and turns to this story that are better left for the reader to discover, but, for me, it was the charm that Violette brings to this story as its narrator that kept me completely engaged and savoring every word from the first one to the last.


Pub Date: Jul 07 2020

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Europa Editions

'What do you expect will become of me if I no longer hear your step, is it your life or mine that’s going, I don’t know.'

Violette Toussaint, once a level-crossing keeper, now works and lives as a cemetery keeper in a small town in Bourgogne, France. Spending her days observing mourners at funerals, familiar with the regulars visiting their loved ones graves, her life is about routine but not without feeling, even if her job requires her to be unaffected. She understands their nuances of grief as well as she can imagine how her departed neighbors feel, no longer among the living, having endured her own “period of death” while going through the motions of her last job, her abandoned life. Working alongside several unconventional men who keep her company and stave off loneliness are the 3 graveside diggers (Nano “everything amuses him”, the clumsy Gaston and Elvis, who croons the late great singer’s songs) the three undertakers (the Luccini brothers) and Father Cedric Duras. Violette is not just a confidant to the many wanderers in the cemetery but a woman who even visits the graves of the long forgotten dead, knowing one day we too will no longer even be a memory. It’s been twenty years since she took on the job, minus her husband who was meant to join her and instead became a “disappearance of concern”. Tending to the cemetery in the countryside demands discretion and somber attire yet when the gates are closed she is free to dress in light, colorful clothes, indulging herself alone. Enjoying her tea one morning before she has opened the gates there comes a knocking on the street side door of her lodgings. It is Detective Julien Sole, whose mother Irene Fayolle’s last wishes were to have her ashes placed on a man’s gravesite. The problem is, the man is a stranger to her son Julien, making his mother’s last request a complete mystery. The man is also not his father, Irene’s husband. His quest for answers pulls Violette in closer than she imagined, or wanted. Life has a way of finding us, even in a cemetery.

Memories, loss, fresh starts, distorted pasts, the untold story of a woman’s greatest grief, the paths and diversions our hearts take in love all unfold in Valérie Perrin’s novel. When I first started reading I thought it would simply be the eye of a woman witnessing funerals, providing the comfort sometimes only a stranger can give, lending aid where needed to mourners and then shrinking into the background. Instead, this novel takes off when Violette’s past is resurrected. The greatest mystery may be what happened to her own husband and why he fled the scene of their love. Is it true some stones are better left unturned?

Love is a different creature, depending on who it’s spent on. When we’re young love often leads us into a fun-house, where what we see and feel is distorted and the outcome is brutal disillusionment. How do others weaken our character by their suffocating care and attention? What happens when there is an imbalance? Worse, when the purest love is taken from us, can we ever recover? It’s an emotional ride that drives home the fact that the cruel hand of fate can make monsters of us. Grief can bury you, make you a stranger to yourself and others but just as easily it can lead to reinvention, rebirth. Are you a passenger in life, the driver or absent altogether?

Live long enough, you taste death in one form or another- how do you go on living in the aftermath of such pains? At times the stories that overlap and merge could be distracting but the tale is tied up into a strong ending reminding us we are destined to cross paths with some people, even if it takes years to see the bigger picture.

Publication Date: July 7, 2020

Europa Editions

Honestly, I thought this book was poorly, POORLY translated to the point where it is unreadable. Je ne parle pas Francais.
For example: " The only difference between them is in the wood of their coffins: oak, pine or mahogany.' What does that mean?
"They'd put me on a radiator." , "Super Mario stopped running. Thr princess tumbled down", "I slept at his place, dazed with the pleasure he'd given my body.", "A fly is swimming in my glass of port", "I'm still wearing winter over summer, when normally, at this hour, I wear summer" and on, and on and on. At times, its laughable.
I think the story could be, would be intersting, if it were properly translated.
Thank you NetGalley and Europa Editions for the opportunity to review this intriguing book.
jb
https://seniorbooklounge.blogspot.com/

I loved this story from the start.. the story of Violette who has been living on her own as a cemetery keeper in a small town in Bourgogne for many years. She has many regular visitors.. gravediggers, groundskeepers, and a priest to her lodge there on the cemetery grounds who are her colleagues but also her close friends.
Violette had been in an unhappy marriage that involved a tragic loss.. and also a job loss.. before this cemetery job and one day her husband took off on his motorcycle and has never returned.
There are a few other stories that branch out from Violet’s.. some that have to do with some of the people buried in her cemetery... one especially, that so moved me!
A story of love, loss and grief..and finding your way through the darkness!
Beautiful!

Thank you to Netgalley and Europa and especially the author for this ARC!

All the stars in the sky for this one, 5 is not enough. This book left me speechless.... it is so beautiful . Though it easily could’ve been very morbid and depressing it makes you smile sometimes in laughter, sometimes through tears. There are heart wrenching elements and you truly feel for every character in the book tho some not till the end. I have highlighted more passages in this than any book ever. Will be buying as soon as released. Best book I’ve read this year.

I really enjoyed reading the stories of the dead people occupying the cemetery. The main story feels a bit long and meandering. A lot of time-hopping to the past, sometimes it's hard to keep track. Overall, I still think that this book is a worthwhile read, and romance novel fans will enjoy the grand love stories.

The only way I can describe this book is that it's an epic. No, not "epic" (though it is certainly that), but AN epic of Homerian proportions that delves deeply and into the lives of its characters as opposed to focusing only on its main character (Violette, the cemetery keeper) the entire time. It is contemporary fiction, a murder mystery, a thriller, a tragedy, and a romance all rolled into one.

It is daunting to read, with more than 400 densely packed pages in the physical book, but it is worth it.

Fresh Water for Flowers by this new to me author took its toll on me. The book by Valérie Perrin, published by Europa Editions, is a full length, stand alone and tells the story of Violette Touissant.
Violette, a married woman with a rough past, had to earn every little thing in life. Let go from her job, she took over as caretaker at a cemetery. She settled in her smalltown life, til Julien Seul, the local chief of police shows up and investigates a case.
Like I already wrote, it took me a minute to get into the story, but once in, I read a touching story, characters believing in good and happiness, well written.
4,5 beautiful stars.

Richly written, beautiful prose and a character in Violette Toussaint that is unapologetic-ally weird, somber, and oddly sensual.

Not a story for those who only like the happy, sunshiney tales but definitely one for those of us who enjoy the shadows and the darkness.

This book was a lot like reading Jane Eyre again for me, I got invested in the main character and throughout the book, it was impossible not to feel my heart being torn in two for her.

I bawled like a baby several points in this book, and the characters just kept circulating in my mind for days afterward! The characters and what they'd been through just played on my emotions so much 😭!

The characters you hated for most of the book you ended up crying for and even the side characters you loved and felt so attached to.
The author did amazing at making the characters real to the readers and making you feel sympathy for them and wanting them to be happy for once in their freaking lives!

If some things had gone differently I would've rated the book higher, but though this book pinched my heart and still has me thinking about it some of the things really bugged me.
However, if it sounds interesting to you I definitely suggest you give it a try.

The low rating is just my personal opinion. While the ending was supposed to be ''happy'' for Violette and I understand that it probably was to some people; it wasn't one I was happy with almost at all. (But seriously, freaking talking to each other would've made several couples much happier earlier in the book.)

I will say, this is absolutely not for younger audiences. Definitely for adults that need a good cry!

Full review here: https://bookswithnoel.blogspot.com/2020/03/fresh-water-for-flowers-jane-eyre.html

What a beautiful, melancholy story! Violette is the cementary caretaker, she had taken on the job with her husband who was a useless, lazy clout. The story entwines around Violette's personal life with her husband leaving her years before and the stories of the departed who are in her cementary. Violette falls in love with a man who is curious as to why his mother wanted to be placed at the grave of a man that wasn't her husband. It is a soft flowing story that carries off the elegance of the French into this translation. Extremely original, a good cozy up weekend read.

This first novel in English by author Valerie Perrin tastes, to me, of France: subtle, refined, elegant, extraordinarily beautiful, while also being earthy, fresh, and honestly direct.

Meet Violette Toussaint, a cemetery keeper who savors life, "like jasmine tea sweetened with honey." For several pages, we see her living a simple life, growing flowers and vegetables in her little garden, serving coffee to the priest and gravediggers, listening compassionately to the bereaved. But Violette has a much more complex story to tell.

This novel becomes increasingly layered and unexpected as each page and chapter progress. Occasionally, other perspectives pop up: Violette's husband, workers at the summer camp their daughter went to, the diary of a woman recently interred in her lover's cemetery plot.

There are twists and turns that surprise, but ultimately, this is a character novel. In theme and form, it highlights how limited our personal perspectives are, underlines how we can never know another's experience or emotions -- unless or until we ask or are told.

I found myself underlining multiple passages, for what they had to convey, but also their lovely rendering. The translation by Hildegarde Serle is fitting and full of voice. It required thoughtful adaptation in places to portray plays on words, multiple voices, epitaphs and quotations from books.

If, as Perrin says, "A memory never dies, it merely falls asleep," then I hope I remember to reread this book when it releases in June 2, 2020. It deserves at least one more read.

Grateful thanks to Europe Editions for the review copy.

This book is guaranteed to move you— halfway through, I noticed how choked up I was.....and soon I was crying.
Slowly I was absorbing the depths of this -breathtaking - story.... multi-layered—a type of meditated trance - if you will - between life and death....and how I ( just one tiny person) - belonged to both: life and death in almost equal measure.
I was learning a subtle lesson from the intricate lush details - about how to live fully immersed with what so many others have kept silent.

Violette Toussaint was a cemetery caretaker in a small town in France: Bourgogne- Brancion-en-Chaplin cemetery. She had worked there for more than twenty years..
Violette had and ageless look about herself. She could pass for a 14-year-old or a 25-year-old.

...We meet the gravediggers: Nono, Gaston, and Elvis...
...We meet Violette’s dog: Elaine
...We meet the undertakers: The Lucchini brothers: Pierre, Paul, and Jacques. The Lucchini brothers, ( 38, 39, and 40), were the owners of the Brancion morgue.
...We meet the Priest: Father Cedric Duras

...We meet many visitors: one being a stranger - a local detective - who shows up at Violette’s door early one dark morning. Violette let the strange man into her house and served him coffee ( coffee was always ready to go)....she described her room ( the place she had lived 20 years):
The room that Violette stayed in, really belonged to everyone.
It was a small room with a kitchen-cum-living room. There were no photos on the wall or colorful tablecloths or couches— just lots of plywood and chairs to sit on. Nothing showing… Yes there was always a pot of coffee ready.
It was the room for “desperate cases, tears, confidences, anger, size, despair, and the laughter of the gravediggers”.
Violette’s bedroom was upstairs. She repainted it after her husband Philippe’s disappearance. No one had ever stepped inside her bedroom after he left.
.....There’s more backstory about Philippe Toussaint - their meeting, their short marriage - his handsomeness - his womanizing - and his disappearance.

Violette’s real home was out in the courtyard. She knew almost every dead person, their location, their death, everything.
She had a funny habit when any person visited her house on the grounds though.......(one that was felt deeper to me as the story unfolded)....
Violette never switched on the light in her place if someone came to visit.....but as soon as they would leave, (walk out the door), she replaced them with light, ...
.... an old habit of a child given up at birth.

This was such a heartfelt beautiful book... I’m still on the edge of tears as I sit here reflecting it.
I went back over my notes. I laughed and cried at the same time the second time re-reading gorgeous moments - scenes - in this book
My gosh....I have SUCH A THING for ‘Europa’, books, anyway....and this gem didn’t disappoint!

A couple more things to share - but I don’t want to spoil the actual story about Violette....and her LIFE....( her circumstances, history, people she meets, her gifts, or even too much about her charming unique character)....
but there are a couple of excerpts I can’t resist sharing....
The very beginning is soooo cool! I’ve read this 3 times....and each time...thought of new things:
“My closest neighbors don’t quake in their boots. They have no worries, don’t fall in love, don’t bite their nails, don’t believe in chance, make no promises, or noise, don’t have Social Security, don’t cry, don’t search for their keys, your glasses, the remote control, their children, happiness.”
“They don’t read, don’t pay taxes, don’t go on diets, don’t have preferences, don’t change their minds, don’t make their beds, don’t smoke, don’t write lists, don’t count to 10 before speaking. They have no one to stand in for them”.
“They’re not ass-kissers, ambitious, grudge-bearers, dandies, petty, generous, jealous, scruffy, clean, awesome, funny, addicted, stingy, cheerful, crafty, violent, lovers, whiners, hypocrites, gentle, tough, feeble, nasty, liars, thieves, gamblers, strivers, idlers, believers, perverts, optimists.
“They’re dead”,
“The only difference between them is in the wood of their coffins: pine or mahogany”.

Also....
.......sooooo beautiful are the epitaphs at the start of each chapter....
After reading this book - I went through the novel once more...just to read-read many of these powerful engravings....
Impossible not to cry when I read one after another after another

Here are a few:
“There’ll always be someone missing to make my life smile: you”.
“May your rest be as sweet as your heart was kind”.

“His beauty, his youth smiled upon the world in which he would have lived. Then from his hands fell the book of which he has read not a word”.

“Talking about you is making you exist, saying nothing would be forgetting you”.

“Soothe his rest with your sweetest singing”.

“Sleep, Nana, sleep, but may you still hear our childish laughter up there and highest Heaven”.
—— Speech for Marie Geant

“There’s something stronger than death, and that the presence of those absent in the memory of the living”.

“The day someone loves you, the weather’s
marvelous”.

“Fresh Water for Flowers is deeply affecting... with flowers “a bit like ladders up to heaven”.....
......written with stunning reserves of compassion, humor, and wisdom. Violette Toussaint is an extraordinary character— a woman of incredible heart and spirit who will remain in my memory for a long time.

Thank you Europa Editions, Netgalley, and Valérie Perrin

I loved this book. I feel like I just spent the most wonderful lifetime with Violette Trenet (married name Touissant.) Feels like a lifetime because the book is quite long, but also because it is such a complete saga. It felt like Elena Ferrante in a more succinct novel, if the focus had been a man-woman relationship instead of a friendship between two women. So many beautiful thoughts and ideas, and the plot did pick up towards the end. Highly recommend to anyone who likes slower-paced novels full of vivid imagery and lots of complicated relationships.