Description
THE BREAKOUT SENSATION SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR FOYLES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019
‘Brilliant’ Joanna Cannon
‘Spellbinding’ Guardian
‘Magic’ Erin Kelly
‘Immersive’ Sunday Times
‘Gorgeous’ Stella Duffy
‘Astounding’ Anna Mazzola
Emmett Farmer is a binder’s apprentice. His job is to hand-craft beautiful books and, within each, to capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory. If you have something you want to forget, or a secret to hide, he can bind it – and you will never have to remember the pain it caused.
In a vault under his mentor’s workshop, row upon row of books – and secrets – are meticulously stored and recorded. Then one day Emmett makes an astonishing discovery: one of the volumes has his name on it.
Paula Fullerton (verified owner) –
I love a bit of historical gothicness. The Binding is a good one too. It’s hard to describe without giving too much away but it made me look at my bookshelves – especially the biographies in a new light.
Katherine Brown –
What Bridget Collins has accomplished in ‘The Binding’ is brilliant. It is a well written book, with a cast of very real, and in some cases, deeply sinister characters. Emmett Farmer must navigate around them to survive when his world is turned upside and he is apprenticed away from the family farm he has always known to become a book-binder; he doesn’t know what led him to being picked, what he is expected to become, nor what books really are in the first place.
The slow plot at the beginning of the book when Emmett is asking these questions and getting frustrated when they go unanswered is the reason for the 4/5 stars and not the full 5/5, because I saw the hand of the author holding back the answers to the latter two questions above that wouldn’t get held back in reality. However, this was a book recommended to me by Bert’s Books, and I trusted that opinion and persevered, and it is well worth it, but it wasn’t an easy connection to make. It’s a book I will enjoy more when I re-read it.