Review of THREE by Valérie Perrin (New Release)

 4 Stars

I read Fresh Water for Flowers and it was one of my favourite books of 2020 (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2020/11/review-of-fresh-water-for-flowers-by.html), so I was excited to read Three by the same author.  Like the former, the latter is totally immersive.

Adrien, Étienne, and Nina are ten years old when they meet at school in 1986 in the small town of La Comelle in Burgundy.  They immediately become inseparable.  Their friendship, they believe, will last forever; when they graduate, they plan to move to Paris and live together while they pursue their dreams.  Three decades later, Virginie, a journalist, reports on the discovery of a car from the bottom of a lake in La Comelle; there’s a body inside.  While reporting on the case, she reflects on the friendship of the trio who no longer speak to each other.  Gradually, secrets, lies, and betrayals are revealed, explaining what happened to that friendship. 

From the beginning, there are questions for which the reader wants answers.  Who exactly is the enigmatic Virginie?  What was her relationship with the three friends that gives her such intimate knowledge of their lives?  Why does only Adrien speak to her now?  Whose body is in the recovered car?  Could it be Clotilde, Étienne’s girlfriend in 1994?  What caused the rift which resulted in the three inseparable friends no longer speaking to each other?  Before all these queries are answered, more questions arise.  Only at the end is all revealed, though the fate of everyone is not completely known.

There are certainly some unexpected twists.  One particular revelation had me going back to the beginning to re-read sections.  That re-reading left me impressed with the number of clues the author sprinkled along the way.  Saying any more would reveal too much.

Characterization is outstanding.  All the characters are complex.  All have positive and negative traits.  The reader sees them not only in relationship to the group but also as individuals.  We come to see their personal struggles and desires.  Though I found myself not always agreeing with their decisions, I understood why they made their choices.  Adrien, for instance, harbours a deep secret; he is quiet and wary and distrustful of others; he describes having a wall which doesn’t just separate him from others but “separating him from himself, the one he’s been hiding behind ever since he could breathe.”  Nina was abandoned by her mother and later suffers a tragedy; these shape her decision-making and even explain her dedication to finding homes for abandoned animals. 

The book emphasizes how it is not possible to fully know someone.  Even the three close friends come to see that they did not know everything about their closest companions.  Some events are revisited and the perspective of another character given.  These are not needless repetitions because they serve to show that even shared experiences do not result in identical memories.  The impact of a shared experience is not the same for everyone. 

The novel moves back and forth through time over 30 years, and sometimes the shifts in time can be momentarily disorienting and confusing.  The viewpoints of other secondary characters (Clotilde, Nina’s grandfather, Bernard Roi, Gé and Emmanuel Damamme, etc.) are also occasionally included.  Nothing that is included, however, is extraneous; everything contributes to the development of plot, character, or theme.  In the end, I was amazed at the intricacy employed to present a cohesive whole.

At over 600 pages, this novel asks the reader to invest considerable time.  It is, however, a rewarding experience.  Personally, I think it’s a book to which I will return in the certainty that I’ll be further impressed with its complexity. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.