Chrysanthe by Yves Meynard

I’ve been trying to read Chrysanthe for two weeks now, and still haven’t hit the halfway point. It’s that experience where the bookmark never seems to move; whenever I sit down to read, I can’t get far before my mind starts to wander. With roughly three hundred pages left to go, I’ve decided to cut my losses.

It starts promisingly enough. Yves Meynard introduces us to a little girl, Christine, who lives with her unpleasant uncle in a world similar to our own present day, but has vague memories of a very different life — a life in a castle, where she wore beautiful gowns and was surrounded by people who loved her. What Meynard does really well here is capture that time in childhood where memory is muddled, where you can never be quite sure if you’re remembering an incident you really witnessed or one you’ve been told about so often that you just Read More