Description
From the international bestselling author of Fresh Water for Flowers, a beautifully told and suspenseful story about the ties that bind us and the choices that make us who we are. 1986: Adrien, Etienne and Nina are 10 years old when they meet at school and quickly become inseparable. They promise each other they will one day leave their provincial backwater, move to Paris, and never part. 2017: A car is pulled up from the bottom of the lake, a body inside. Virginie, a local journalist with an enigmatic past reports on the case while also reflecting on the relationship between the three friends, who were unusually close when younger but now no longer speak. . As Virginie moves closer to the surprising truth, relationships fray and others are formed. Valerie Perrin has an unerring gift for delving into life. In Three, she brings readers along with her through a sequence of heart-wrenching events and revelations that span three decades. Three tells a moving story of love and loss, hope and grief, friendship and adversity, and of time as an ineluctable agent of change.… (more)
Publication
Europa Editions (2022), 512 pages
User reviews
LibraryThing member pomo58
I was torn on the rating I wanted to give this novel, Three by Valerie Perrin, but the characters and the story (stories) have stayed present to me for these few days which bumped it up.
The main group of three friends and then the fourth who is periphery at best to the group encompass the best and
The mystery at the heart of the novel serves as much as a frame so we can jump between their school years and their present. What made these shifts in time particularly compelling was the way most of the jumps informed the sections around them. Knowing in going back the things they didn't yet know, and in coming back to the present knowing what they had thought and expected their futures to hold. If you're a reader who both inhabits the novel and relates it to your own life, this might be similar to when you pull out an old yearbook and get lost in the memories only to remember what actually has transpired since then.
I probably became almost immediately invested in them early because I met one of my very best friends in school simply because we were in the same class and ended up seated by each other. Until I moved, we were inseparable, so the idea of serendipity determining one's best friend hit me close to home. I even called him to see how he and his family are doing (they're doing great, by the way!).
I would recommend this to readers who enjoy taking time to get to know characters and who understand that just as in life, characters are neither all good nor all bad, yet we love them anyway.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
The main group of three friends and then the fourth who is periphery at best to the group encompass the best and
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the worst of friendships and cliques both growing up and as adults. These are flawed, and at times frustrating, characters. Which is to say a lot like people we all know (and ourselves if we're honest). If you like getting to know characters, especially a group along with their interactions, you will love this book for that alone.The mystery at the heart of the novel serves as much as a frame so we can jump between their school years and their present. What made these shifts in time particularly compelling was the way most of the jumps informed the sections around them. Knowing in going back the things they didn't yet know, and in coming back to the present knowing what they had thought and expected their futures to hold. If you're a reader who both inhabits the novel and relates it to your own life, this might be similar to when you pull out an old yearbook and get lost in the memories only to remember what actually has transpired since then.
I probably became almost immediately invested in them early because I met one of my very best friends in school simply because we were in the same class and ended up seated by each other. Until I moved, we were inseparable, so the idea of serendipity determining one's best friend hit me close to home. I even called him to see how he and his family are doing (they're doing great, by the way!).
I would recommend this to readers who enjoy taking time to get to know characters and who understand that just as in life, characters are neither all good nor all bad, yet we love them anyway.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
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LibraryThing member whitreidtan
Friendships are special things and children are the best at them. They can be so open and welcoming to other children. My own children would come off of playgrounds to inform me that their new friend so and so had told them something or to ask if the new friend could come over the play. Every time
Adrien, Étienne, and Nina are only 10 years old when they meet in 1986 in their provincial French town. Nina is graceful, sensitive, and artistic, being raised by her postman grandfather since her mother left when she was small. She is the glue between the two boys. Étienne is good looking and popular, from a wealthy family, but he can never satisfy his judgmental father. Adrien is quiet and wickedly smart; he and his single mother are new to the area. Somehow these very different fifth graders come together to become "the three." The three who are always there for each other. The three who will protect each other. The three who are as much a part of each other as a limb is. Until they are not. Until they are each just one.
In 2017, in their adult lives, Adrien, Étienne, and Nina are estranged. They do not speak to each other. Their once firm plans to escape their town and move to Paris to start a band are long since abandoned. They are very different people than the children and young adults they once were, changed by tragedy and circumstance. Local journalist Virginie, who once knew "the three," watches the fallout as a car pulled from a local lake with a body inside brings back the summer that everything started going so very wrong for each of the friends. Whose body is it? Could it be Étienne's missing girlfriend? And if it is, what will each of "the three" make of it?
Perrin has written an intricately plotted novel that is epic in scope. Her characters are complex and well rounded. Both timelines are told in the present tense but only the portions that the mysterious Virginie narrates are from the first person perspective. This gives a slightly larger distance from the story of "the three" than from Virginie's watchful tale, keeping the fabled friendship just that much more out of arm's reach, that much more enigmatic. The two storylines twine around each other, leading the reader to the things that ultimately ruptured the friendship, to the revelation of the body's identity, to just who Virginie is and who she is specifically to "the three," and to the future that each of them face and embrace in the end. There are well crafted, slow measured reveals of the secrets hidden for years that build the story to its end as Perrin poses the question of whether you can ever really fully know another person, or perhaps even yourself. This is a literary mystery within a well written story of friendship, loyalty, betrayal, the past and the present. It is a quiet, long, slow novel, thoroughly engrossing and occasionally surprising. Fans of literary fiction will enjoy it for sure.
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they used this language: "my new friend." And while many of these were momentary friendships, not lasting any longer than the time we spent on the playground, they also developed deep and abiding friendships that persist to this day. These dear childhood friendships can be battered and they will survive but they can also be broken given enough stress on them. Valerie Perrin's latest novel, Three, centers on three friends who were inseparable as children but who have gone their own ways as adults because of tragedies and life choices.Adrien, Étienne, and Nina are only 10 years old when they meet in 1986 in their provincial French town. Nina is graceful, sensitive, and artistic, being raised by her postman grandfather since her mother left when she was small. She is the glue between the two boys. Étienne is good looking and popular, from a wealthy family, but he can never satisfy his judgmental father. Adrien is quiet and wickedly smart; he and his single mother are new to the area. Somehow these very different fifth graders come together to become "the three." The three who are always there for each other. The three who will protect each other. The three who are as much a part of each other as a limb is. Until they are not. Until they are each just one.
In 2017, in their adult lives, Adrien, Étienne, and Nina are estranged. They do not speak to each other. Their once firm plans to escape their town and move to Paris to start a band are long since abandoned. They are very different people than the children and young adults they once were, changed by tragedy and circumstance. Local journalist Virginie, who once knew "the three," watches the fallout as a car pulled from a local lake with a body inside brings back the summer that everything started going so very wrong for each of the friends. Whose body is it? Could it be Étienne's missing girlfriend? And if it is, what will each of "the three" make of it?
Perrin has written an intricately plotted novel that is epic in scope. Her characters are complex and well rounded. Both timelines are told in the present tense but only the portions that the mysterious Virginie narrates are from the first person perspective. This gives a slightly larger distance from the story of "the three" than from Virginie's watchful tale, keeping the fabled friendship just that much more out of arm's reach, that much more enigmatic. The two storylines twine around each other, leading the reader to the things that ultimately ruptured the friendship, to the revelation of the body's identity, to just who Virginie is and who she is specifically to "the three," and to the future that each of them face and embrace in the end. There are well crafted, slow measured reveals of the secrets hidden for years that build the story to its end as Perrin poses the question of whether you can ever really fully know another person, or perhaps even yourself. This is a literary mystery within a well written story of friendship, loyalty, betrayal, the past and the present. It is a quiet, long, slow novel, thoroughly engrossing and occasionally surprising. Fans of literary fiction will enjoy it for sure.
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LibraryThing member Beecharmer
Half way thru this novel I gave up. Just too boring.
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
Nina, Etienne, and Adrien meet on the first day of school when they are 10. From that day forward, they are inseparable, and plan to go to Paris together when they receive their bac degrees....But circumstances intervene, and in the "present" of this book, 2017, the three are estranged and have not
The book skips around in time and varies the pov character, as we learn the story of their intense friendship and what torpedoed it. I found this an engaging tale of growing up, young adulthood, and even early middle-age. It has an intricate plot, an appealing setting (small French country town and Paris), and is a well-written page-turner.
Recommended. 3 1/2 stars
First line: "This morning Nina looked at me without seeing me."
Pertinent quote: "In every life there are some befores and afters"
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spoken in years.The book skips around in time and varies the pov character, as we learn the story of their intense friendship and what torpedoed it. I found this an engaging tale of growing up, young adulthood, and even early middle-age. It has an intricate plot, an appealing setting (small French country town and Paris), and is a well-written page-turner.
Recommended. 3 1/2 stars
First line: "This morning Nina looked at me without seeing me."
Pertinent quote: "In every life there are some befores and afters"
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Language
Original language
English
Physical description
512 p.; 9 inches
ISBN
1609457552 / 9781609457556