The Binding
Author: Bridgett Collins
Year of release: 2019
Publisher Harper Collins Australia
Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, LGBT, Romance
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Synopsis
Books are dangerous things in Collins’s alternate universe, a place vaguely reminiscent of 19th-century England. It’s a world in which people visit book binders to rid themselves of painful or treacherous memories. Once their stories have been told and are bound between the pages of a book, the slate is wiped clean and their memories lose the power to hurt or haunt them. After having suffered some sort of mental collapse and no longer able to keep up with his farm chores, Emmett Farmer is sent to the workshop of one such binder to live and work as her apprentice. Leaving behind home and family, Emmett slowly regains his health while learning the binding trade. He is forbidden to enter the locked room where books are stored, so he spends many months marbling end pages, tooling leather book covers, and gilding edges. But his curiosity is piqued by the people who come and go from the inner sanctum, and the arrival of the lordly Lucian Darnay, with whom he senses a connection, changes everything.
Review
One day whilst working out in the fields on his family’s farm Emmett Farmer falls ill, after months of rest, Emmett finally awakens remembering only parts of the vivid dreams he’d been having. Shortly after it is decided upon by his father that Emmett must leave the farm and his family behind to go and work for the witch out in the marshes. Emmett finds himself torn between not wanting to go but no longer being a burden on his family any longer Emmett makes the journey out to the marsh with his father.
Upon arrival he is set repetitive tasks but the witch now known to Emmett as Seredith is not so forth coming with any of Emmett’s questions Seredith shows Emmett the skills to bind beautiful books. Seredith eventually informs Emmett that he is in fact a born binder.
So many things drew me to this book the cover the synopsis, the pages themselves but I would be doing this book a disservice if I didn’t say the concept of this book, within these pages is what ultimately makes you keep reading.
I always knew books were more than just books. Ever have one of those days or moments you wish you could forget? I don’t just mean to file it away in a draw marked this is not happening. I mean completely erase?.
The Binding has so much going on it was impossible not to get swept away in this universe, The setting author Bridget Collins has done a wonderful job to describe Emmett Farmer’s world what an undertaking that must’ve been. I felt so at home in marsh with Emmett and Seredith.
What makes the story so unique is the skill of a book binder they are able to take a person’s memories and turn them into a book filled with a person’s darkest secrets to painful or even too hard to carry with them any longer.
I have a love, like relationship with this read, the concept I found the writing to be descriptive but at times long winded towards the end, I found myself wondering will their be time left in the book to cover the events and unanswered questioned I had.
Stand-outs for the binding:
- The concept behind this book is truly unlike anything I have ever read, the idea that books can contain something of a person is just marvellous.
- Descriptive writing
- The relationship between Emmett and Lucian
- Splotch anytime a book can include a dog it should
- Part one as it showed more of a personable Emmett
Improvements for the reader:
- The Binding doesn’t cover an exact location or time period even though it doesn’t spoil the story in anyway, I’m the reader who likes the little things.
- The characters didn’t sell the story for me, I found them to be somewhat moody and unrelatable.
- The change in perspectives without informing the reader we spend our time between Emmett and Lucian, again a little bit of information on this change would’ve suited me here
- what happens to splotch seemed to be a plot filler being that I am a dog lover it just didn’t seem necessary to go into such detail
I recommend this book to readers of magical realism Historical Fiction, if your looking to venture into either of these genres this might be looking into, this book is best suited to adult readers.
