Forgotten on Sunday

 

Forgotten on Sunday / Valérie Perrin
trans. from the French by Hildegarde Searle
NY: Europa, 2025, c2015.
304 p.

I've taken a bit of time away from blogging after my August Women in Translation rush! But that doesn't mean I am done reviewing, oh no. I still have a couple of translated books to share with you, and then a whole bunch of contemporary reads, mid-century reads, Ukrainian reads, and more. 

But today I'll share the French novel that I finished just as August was wrapping up. Forgotten on Sunday is Valerie Perrin's first novel, although not the first to be translated into English. Her second novel Fresh Water for Flowers was the first English offering, and was a huge hit. I liked it but found it a bit melodramatic. This novel was more to my taste, even though it also had some melodrama/soapy elements. 

Justine and her cousin Jules have lived with their grandparents since they were children, when both of their sets of parents were killed in a car accident. Justine cares for her grandparents in many ways, and takes care of Jules too, secretly putting aside money from her own savings to get him to university in the city. 

She is working in a seniors home as a care aide, where she spends lots of unpaid time listening to residents' stories. The book moves between Justine's own life, in which she is trying to figure out the truth behind her parents' death, and the life story of Helene Hel, a resident who is often on the beach with her husband in her memories. 

Add to that Helene's handsome grandson, some mysterious calls to family members of residents telling them their relative has died (which is the only way to get some of them to turn up for a visit), Justine's sometime lover 'What's-His-Name', and her cranky grandparents' back story, and you get a lot of narrative threads woven in here. 

Justine is tough, she is self-contained, she is slow to trust, but she ends up with a sense of possibility for the future despite everything she is dealing with. Helene's story illuminates France prior to and during WWII, and there are the elements you might expect with that time frame. Helene was a seamstress, and this is an integral part of the story, one part that I really liked. But she had a hard life, and her story perfectly locks in with Justine's contemporary one. I found the balance well done, with both characters and both lives making for compelling reading. As noted, the plot can get a little soapy, but I still thought that it was a great read that had some strong characters to carry the story. Lots of different elements to interest and engage a variety of readers. I'm glad I picked this one up.