On the first day of fifth grade in 1986, when they're 10-years-old, Nina Beau, Étienne Beaulieu and Adrien Bobin are placed in the same class at École Pasteur in the town of La Comelle, France.
Nina
Étienne
Adrien
The threesome immediately become inseparable friends, and share everything until they go their separate ways as young adults in the late 1990s.
Then in 2017, a car stolen on August 17, 1994 is pulled from the town's Lac de la Forêt, a watering hole where teens hang out.
Coincidentally, a girl named Clotilde Marais also disappeared from La Comelle on August 17, 1994. When human remains are found in the recovered car, the police suspect it's Clotilde - and as the authorities work to make the identification, the story alternates back and forth between 2017 and the past.
Much of the tale is narrated by a translator/journalist named Virginie, a contemporary of Nina, Étienne, and Adrien. Virginie describes herself as "A beanpole with a decent enough chassis. Bangs, shoulder-length dark brown hair."
Talking about Nina, Étienne, and Adrien, Virginie observes, "Today, out of the three, only Adrien speaks to me. Nina despises me. As for Étienne, it's me who can no longer stand him. And yet, they've fascinated me since childhood. I've only ever become attached to those three. And to Louise [Étienne's sister]."
Going back to 1986, 10-year-old Nina, Étienne, and Adrien are drawn together by the same dream: "Leaving when they are grown up. Quitting this hole to go and live in a city full of traffic lights, noise, and frenzy."
The threesome also share something else - a vacancy in their lives. Nina, who's being raised by her postman grandfather, was abandoned by her mother and doesn't know who her father is; Étienne has well-to-do parents, but his father is cold, distant, and dismissive; and Adrien's free-spirit mother got pregnant by a married man who has no interest in the boy.
Nina, Étienne, and Adrien form an impenetrable trio. They sit near each other in class; eat lunch together at school; go to the movies and sit in the front row; go to the skateboard park, where Nina watches the boys skateboard; visit each other's houses to talk, eat, and listen to music; have sleepovers in each other's homes; vacation together; and more.
The trio share everything, so when Nina gets her period at the age of eleven, the boys accompany her to the doctor. Other children might long to join the threesome, but no one can. And so it goes, right through high school.
The friends face various challenges during their formative years. For example:
Mr. Py, the trio's fifth grade teacher, is a despicable man who takes malicious pleasure in tormenting one boy each semester. The unfortunate child is sent to the board to solve unsolvable math problems; kept inside at recess for extra lessons; made to stay after class to write lines; constantly chastised; repeatedly humiliated in front of his classmates, etc. Unfortunately, quiet, thoughtful Adrien is the chosen torture victim this year, and he insists his friends - and his worried mother Joséphine - don't interfere. Adrien just takes it and takes it....until he doesn't.
Feeling discarded by her mother, Nina sneaks letters out of her grandfather's mail sacks, steams them open, reads them, and puts them back. If this misbehavior comes to light Nina's grandfather, who's been La Comelle's postman for decades, will be fired or worse. Nevertheless, Nina can't stop stealing and reading letters, and she thinks her absent mother - who Nina obsesses about constantly - made her a thief.
As for Étienne, he's not a good student, but he's a golden boy who attracts girls like honey draws flies. Though Étienne is willing enough to have a fling, he's much too selfish to commit, and this leads to trouble as Étienne gets older.
Much more goes on in the young people's lives, and the incidents that pull them apart revolve around two deaths: Nina's grandfather dies in a traffic accident in 1994, and Adrien's mother dies from cancer in 1997.
At eighteen, bereft at the loss of her grandpa, Nina marries Emmanuel Dammamme, a 28-year-old heir to his parents' business empire.
Emmanuel turns out to be an obsessive. controlling man who isolates Nina from her friends and is determined to get her pregnant. Nina knows Emmanuel would hunt her down if she left, though she still schemes to get away. We know something happens, however, because single fortysomething Nina runs an animal shelter in La Comelle at the beginning of the story. Anecdotes about the rescued animals at the shelter, and the people who adopt them, are important aspects of the novel.
As for the young men, golden boy Étienne goes off to the police academy to become a cop......
.....and quiet thoughtful Adrien becomes a novelist and playwright.
Various occurrences lead not only to estrangement among Nina, Étienne, and Adrien, but to emotions closer to detestation. Nevertheless, the 2017 discovery of the stolen car containing human remains leads to some level of rapprochement among the former best friends.
As the story follows the characters' arcs, it's punctuated by mentions of their favorite songs, which adds a nice musical touch to the book.
Author Valérie Perrin, who also wrote 'Fresh Water for Flowers', is an excellent storyteller and this is a very good book. Highly recommended.
Thanks to Netgalley, Valérie Perrin, and Europa Editions for a copy of the manuscript.
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