My thoughts: As I mentioned in my “October Monthly Round Up”, I have so many books on
my bookshelf waiting to be read. But, as I am a passionate soul, whenever a
book captures my attention, I take it home. Thus, I borrowed “Coeur Silencieux”
by Anne Brécart from my local library. This Swiss author is a wonderful
discovery. I finished this book in two days and can’t stop thinking about it.
This will be one of those books that stay with me forever. It is a reminder of
what love life is like; there are no bad decisions, just appropriate ones, made
at that particular stage in our life.
In “Coeurs Silencieux”
the narrator observes what time is doing to emotional attachments and she
explores what is no longer and what remains unaltered: the old emotions, the
links re-emerging from the mists of time.
This is an
elegant and delicately written novel. I loved the nostalgia that this story evokes;
the book oscillates between the old days and the present. The narrator, Hannah,
is a woman in her fifties who, after a divorce and two grown up children,
decides to return to the village of her childhood, using the excuse of the sale
of her mum’s house. Upon her arrival, she is welcomed by Jacob, the sweetheart
of her adolescence. They met forty years earlier; she was a 14 year old
teenager and Jacob a 21 year old young adult teacher. Jacob entrusts her with
the diary where he recorded the two years of their love story. Despite the
forty years spent apart, Hannah succumbs again to this silent and mysterious man
with ambivalent behaviour.