*A GUARDIAN BEST TRANSLATED NOVEL OF 2023*
*A WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS BEST TRANSLATED BOOK OF 2023*
*LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE'S BARRIOS BOOK IN TRANSLATION PRIZE 2023*
"A powerful story of mothers and daughters" Guardian
"A haunting, mysterious tour de force" Lucy Scholes, Prospect
"I was hypnotised from the first word to the last" Tess Gunty, author of The Rabbit Hutch
"[A] fiercely intelligent story: everyone is complex and full of shadows, as life is" Mariana Enríquez, author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
When Gilles Principaux walks into Maître Susane's legal practice seeking representation for his wife, his presence triggers memories from her childhood she had long buried. Gilles' wife is charged with drowning their three children, a case that will be splashed across the news media in Bordeaux and beyond. So why has he entrusted his wife's fate to her small, unremarkable practice?
Maître Susane can't shake the feeling that she has met him before, that something happened between them one afternoon when she was barely ten and he was fourteen, something sinister she has never known how to remember. But Gilles seems so at ease her in presence that Maître Susane begins to believe that her memory must be playing tricks on her.
Haunted by a past that both escapes and consumes her, Maître Susane fights to hold on to her memory, her identity and the chance she's been given to avenge herself.
Translated from the French by Jordan Stump.