It was meant
to become a wonderful day when Simon, his wife and his sister Garance get on their
way to a wedding. But from the beginning sister and wife do not get along very
well and fight in the car, actually they never have liked each other a lot. Garance
misses their other sister, Lola, and their brother Vincent. When Lola suddenly
phones and asks them to meet her at a train station, the atmosphere gets even
more tense and at the wedding, the sibling finally decide to go on another trip
and visit Vincent in his castle. Again, they can just be kids and remember the
time they hat together when they were young.
I have read
other works of Anna Gavalda before and what captured me there, the depth of the
characters, their complexity and struggles, is lacking here completely. All protagonists
remain superficial and are drawn too much in black and white to appear lively.
What made the story especially strange was the fact, that the perspective
changes at one point and the first person narrator becomes a third person
narrator. This was also the moment where the plot became a bit strange and the novel
lost me completely. Unfortunately a disappointment compared to other novels of
the author.
