Our Precious Wars - by Perrine Tripier (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

An ode to memory, to home, and to the beauty of the natural world

What remains of the springs, summers, autumns, and winters of a woman's life?

Isadora, now an old woman relegated to a hospice, looks back on her life and how intimately intertwined it was with that of the big, sprawling house where she spent almost her entire existence.

Her memories of childhood and beyond come back to her, season by season: from the games and warmth of Summer and the back-to-school days of Autumn, to the crisp, cold days of Winter--days of loneliness and death--and to Spring's promise of renewal, and of the return to the house that meant so much to her.

Told in lyrical, beguiling language, Isadora guides the reader through the maze of her memory by classifying, like a watercolor painter, her recollections by season.

Review Quotes

"Most enjoyable by far is the feast of descriptive prose that Tripier lays before her readers. Every sense is appealed to in an effective bid to emulate childlike discovery and wonder. A very fine novel and an auspicious debut." --The French Review

"It's rare to say it, but everything about this book is good: its luminous and simple prose, its original structure, divided by seasons, that remixes the evocations, the memories, the characters, in every chapter." --Culture-Tops.fr

"Delightful... A poetic and melancholic contemplation of what life may be." -- ActuaLitté

"One would think it the book of a young poet written by an old soul. The structure is admirable. Chronological and cyclical, it gives the sharp sense of the transience of life..." --Le Figaro

"A sweeping family saga as well as a philosophical reflection on old age and the passage of time... An astonishing novel for the candor of its prose and the depth of its content, which stands out even more considering it was written by a young woman in her early twenties, already possessing such a savvy and sharp perspective, capable of describing with such precision the chiaroscuro of an aged body and a torn mind, both obsessed with a past that inevitably can never return."--Il Foglio (Italy)