I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. I’ve tried to get into this book but can’t seem to though it’s been popular at the library so I will try again.

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. 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 Valerie Perrin, who also wrote 'Fresh Water for Flowers', is an excellent storyteller and this is a very good book. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley, Valerie Perrin, and Europa Editions for a copy of the manuscript.

Beautiful story- beautiful writing! Loved every pages of this long story and the surprise made me gasp! Just lovely.

Translated novels and short stories are my poison — whether it's Indian or European.

Three, a 550-plus-page French saga, spanning four decades (1986—2017), telling the story of Nina, Etienne, and Adrien — from their childhood into their 40s — is an absolute literary marvel with a shocking revelation with a crime angle layered as a parallel plot is contemporary European masterpiece.

I just can't wait to see this novel made into a webseries.

It is 1986, La Comelle, a small town in France, the trio of Nina, Etienne, and Adrien on their first meet as fifth-graders develop an inseparable bonding.

Nina lives with her grandpa, a mailman — mother a goner, father unknown. Adrien lives with his mother — father separated and has a new family in Paris. Etienne has a proper family setup with an elder brother, a younger sister Louise (Adrien's crush in later days), a doting mom, and an unloving father.

All three have a complex life, home, and surroundings, but their friendship binds them like a glue. They grow together as teenagers, swim in the afternoon at municipality pool, and start a music band in a smallish way, and plan to escape to Paris after their schooling — sick of their small-town atmosphere and looking for greener pastures.

It is 2017, Virginie, a journalist in a local newspaper in La Comelle, reports on a body found from a sunken car in a lake after 23 years.

The dead, drowned body is Clotilde, the missing girl — once a love interest of Etienne. How are the trio linked to this crime plot? An interesting journey ahead.

In 2017, 41-year-old trio have a different life altogether: Nina, divorced and an animal shelter manager; Etienne, a cop, married with an adolescent son and family in tact, suffering from a terminal illness; Adrien, unmarried, published author and playwright, and works in a daily.

Ms Perrin, a master craftsman and a story plotter, keeps us hooked with her long, unwinding sentences that never dulls a wee bit. And the freaking plot twist — oh my gawd. She's a genius!

The translation is seamless,suspenseful, and captures the emotions in right doses that choked me, made me cry, obstructed my breathing that I had to pass in between — not joking. I have been living with these characters now for the past month that I am literally transformed to the French world.

I have just scratched the surface with my mini-review. This novel is unputdownable and a slow-burn layered drama that hits the right chord with each chapter, paragraph, sentence, and word.

Highly recommended for readers who love translated works and read magnum opus kinda books.

Love this author so much…. gorgeous writing, the characters written with such empathy and depth, and a compelling plot, full of love, betrayals, tragedy and secrets. It’s a story of three friends, inseparable in childhood, separated by a series of events in their teens, as the narrative moves back and forth in time. Ultimately this is about friendship in all its complexities, evolution and endurance. Just fantastic…..

Fresh Water for Flowers is one of my favorite books of all time, so I was very excited to read Three! This was a heart renching book that I loved as much as I loved Fresh Water. I cannot believe how strong a writer Perrin is. A beautiful exploration of loss and friendship that I'll be recommending to anyone that will listen.

I've heard such great things about Valerie Perrin but sadly I found that her writing was not to my taste. To me, her writing skews more commercial than literary, which I don't necessarily mind as a rule, but which I struggled with in the case of this particular book. Mainly, I had a hard time caring about the present timeline, and didn't find the past timeline compelling enough to be invested in the story. Sad to say this one didn't work for me, but I can definitely see others enjoying it.

A lovely character novel filled with Perrin's characteristic insight into human behavior, slow reveals and obliquely happy ending.

Three features a trio of protagonists, from the day they first meet as elementary school children until into their middle age. The novel portrays how friendship, love, and loss are the stepping stones to who become, a path that twists and turns, leads us away from and back to ourselves.

What I love most about Perrin's writing is how she emphasizes the complexity of humans and human emotion, through showing the same event or character from multiple angles. It is a beautiful reminder that one perspective is only ever part of the whole story.

At times I felt the novel was a bit unnecessarily drawn out and the reveals not quite as precise or illuminating as I found them to be in Fresh Water for Flowers.

Still, I did enjoy the book and would recommend it to fans of Perrin, those who liked books like Muriel Barberry's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and other titles by Europa books.

1986: Adrien, Etienne and Nina are 10 years old when they meet at school and quickly become inseparable. They promise each other they will one day leave their provincial backwater, move to Paris, and never part.

2017: A car is pulled up from the bottom of the lake, a body inside. Virginie, a local journalist with an enigmatic past reports on the case while also reflecting on the relationship between the three friends, who were unusually close when younger but now no longer speak. . As Virginie moves closer to the surprising truth, relationships fray and others are formed.

A slow burn book that takes a deep look at the lives of each of the characters involved. It is told from duel timelines to further deepen our understanding of the main characters, their relationships, and their motives.

I didn’t personally get into it but I can see many of our patrons enjoying.

Thank you to NetGalley and Europa for the ARC.

Nina Beau, Étienne Beaulieu and Adrien Bobin make up the three, inseparable, childhood friends in Valerie Perrin’s latest novel. We follow them for 30 years. Not a book that can be rushed through, and a perfect book for readers who prefer a book that delves into the characters. But don't be fooled into thinking you know everything.

𝙈𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙨, 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙩, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙚𝙧 𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙪𝙢𝙚. 𝙒𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙣𝙚’𝙨 𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙚, 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙙 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙪𝙢𝙚.
Nina Beau, Étienne Beaulieu and Adrien Bobin make up the three, inseparable, childhood friends in Perrin’s latest novel. Having met on the first day of fifth grade in 1986 at the École Pasteur, each condemned to be under Monsieur Py, their bond is formed and sealed tight. Life isn’t always easy going nor charmed. Nina is raised by her grandfather, reminders of her mother have been erased, so she engages her heart in thievery, sneaking letters her grandfather delivers as a postal worker. Étiene lives in a beautiful house with his parents and little sister, his older brother off studying in Dijon but wealth isn’t always a guarantee for happiness. Adrien’s father is absent, it is his mother who raises him, he doesn’t even know if he has siblings. He is a love child. For him, it is easy to go along with anything his vibrant friends think up. The friends future plan is to one day move to the city together, and get as far away from their origins as possible. Nina is their center from the beginning, the glue that holds the boys friendship together. It doesn’t matter what the rest of their peers feel about them, their alliance is their love and protection. Nina finds comfort in confiding in her friends about the longing for her mother, whose whereabout are unknown to her, there is nary a picture in sight to freshen the fleeting memories she has, like the time her mother came around needing money. Adriene understands, with his own married father’s sparse visits, the space absence occupies. All they seem to have is each other and while the three are different on the outside, they laugh and love much the same on the inside. The only interruption in their rituals is Nina’s asthma. Not even an enemy, a cruel bully of a teacher, can break them. Time will have its way though.

They will transform as they come of age, trading in secrets and lyrics, sure fame awaits them. Each have their dreams and it always features their friendship. They don’t have to prove themselves to one another the way they do with their families and any other outsiders. With high school comes complications, tangled romances that could bode ill for the future. One night, a girl from their school disappears, without a clue remaining. Nina’s about to face a serious loss and in the face of shame and guilt may make a choice that could ruin her. All she really wanted is a soft place to land, tender care. Instead she has become, once again, nothing more than an abandoned dog. It’s what she deserves, ‘the daughter of a whore’, at least that’s what she tells herself. Self-sabotage is on the horizon and what friendship can survive it? Other characters seem to orbit them, but have relevance, more as the years pass. Pain makes a mess of them all, despite successes, the retreat from the wounds of their youth returns to confront them. Not partners, children, stray animals nor awards can ease their conscience nor loosen the grip of the past. Truth always comes to the surface. Nina isn’t the only one buried in guilt.

Jump to the future and 2017 where a car is pulled from the bottom of a lake, a dead body inside. How is this mystery connected to the Three? A freelance journalist, Virginie, is digging through the past, our fly on the wall of the exclusive trio. She, too, grew up in Burgundy alongside the trio. At the start of the novel Virginie informs us that she still speaks to only Adrien, that Nina ‘despises me’ and “I cannot stand Étienne”. Virginie has held the friends in fascination since childhood. Why? She says from the beginning that they never really saw her. And who is Louise, Étiene’s sister, to Virginie? Why did Nina stay behind (now running an animal shelter) and the boys leave, a fractured reality of the promise they had made to move away together? It is a slow unfolding drama, one that sways between sweet nostalgia and searing regrets. Misunderstandings spread like wildfire, though they are like siblings to each other, puberty sometimes tests them. They commit betrayals, without even realizing it. Virginie, of the present, is tasked with the job of writing about the wreckage, chilled that the car was stolen in August of 1994, the same time a fellow student, Clotilde Marais disappeared. A girl she never liked. Though she was always an outsider, her ever watchful eye is vital, even though Nina calls her a ghost, which is peculiar. This novel does have it’s surprises.

This was an engaging slow burn for me, it’s a painful coming of age, many skins are shed. They get themselves into traps and life is unfair, fate doesn’t play nice but it all makes sense at the close. I look forward to Perrin’s next novel, I also enjoyed Fresh Water For Flowers, also a heartbreak of a read.

Publication Date: June 7, 2022 Available Today

Europa Editions

I read Fresh Water for Flowers and it was one of my favourite books of 2020 (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2020/11/review-of-fresh-water-for-flowers-by.html), so I was excited to read Three by the same author. Like the former, the latter is totally immersive.

Adrien, Étienne, and Nina are ten years old when they meet at school in 1986 in the small town of La Comelle in Burgundy. They immediately become inseparable. Their friendship, they believe, will last forever; when they graduate, they plan to move to Paris and live together while they pursue their dreams. Three decades later, Virginie, a journalist, reports on the discovery of a car from the bottom of a lake in La Comelle; there’s a body inside. While reporting on the case, she reflects on the friendship of the trio who no longer speak to each other. Gradually, secrets, lies, and betrayals are revealed, explaining what happened to that friendship.

From the beginning, there are questions for which the reader wants answers. Who exactly is the enigmatic Virginie? What was her relationship with the three friends that gives her such intimate knowledge of their lives? Why does only Adrien speak to her now? Whose body is in the recovered car? Could it be Clotilde, Étienne’s girlfriend in 1994? What caused the rift which resulted in the three inseparable friends no longer speaking to each other? Before all these queries are answered, more questions arise. Only at the end is all revealed, though the fate of everyone is not completely known.

There are certainly some unexpected twists. One particular revelation had me going back to the beginning to re-read sections. That re-reading left me impressed with the number of clues the author sprinkled along the way. Saying any more would reveal too much.

Characterization is outstanding. All the characters are complex. All have positive and negative traits. The reader sees them not only in relationship to the group but also as individuals. We come to see their personal struggles and desires. Though I found myself not always agreeing with their decisions, I understood why they made their choices. Adrien, for instance, harbours a deep secret; he is quiet and wary and distrustful of others; he describes having a wall which doesn’t just separate him from others but “separating him from himself, the one he’s been hiding behind ever since he could breathe.” Nina was abandoned by her mother and later suffers a tragedy; these shape her decision-making and even explain her dedication to finding homes for abandoned animals.

The book emphasizes how it is not possible to fully know someone. Even the three close friends come to see that they did not know everything about their closest companions. Some events are revisited and the perspective of another character given. These are not needless repetitions because they serve to show that even shared experiences do not result in identical memories. The impact of a shared experience is not the same for everyone.

The novel moves back and forth through time over 30 years, and sometimes the shifts in time can be momentarily disorienting and confusing. The viewpoints of other secondary characters (Clotilde, Nina’s grandfather, Bernard Roi, Gé and Emmanuel Damamme, etc.) are also occasionally included. Nothing that is included, however, is extraneous; everything contributes to the development of plot, character, or theme. In the end, I was amazed at the intricacy employed to present a cohesive whole.

At over 600 pages, this novel asks the reader to invest considerable time. It is, however, a rewarding experience. Personally, I think it’s a book to which I will return in the certainty that I’ll be further impressed with its complexity.

Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

I haven’t read a Europa title I didn’t live in…a long time. This novel was great, about three childhood friends growing up in France. We follow them from ages 10 to 42 and there isn’t much left out (read: the novel is 30 years long). Loved it.

A tale of the tumultuous relationships between three friends in a French town, THREE utilizes alternating timelines to explore friendships, relationships, and identity through separations and absences.

The characters are complex, flawed yet understandable, and it is with both anticipation and trepidation that I read about their joys and tribulations, the ups and downs in their lives. I particularly like how the book delves into each of the three friends as individuals, the things they each face separate from their friendship, as it shows how one perhaps can never truly know a person no matter how much they believe otherwise.

However, the writing can be too long-winded at times, and some things could certainly be cut as they are not wholly necessary. Currently, the aforementioned unnecessary elements drag the pacing, in addition to making the book needlessly long. And though the characters' ups and downs can be quite a ride, I find some of them overdramatic and superfluously gratuitous, included just to throw in some misery.

Overall, a book that explores interesting - albeit well-worn - ideas, though the execution leaves something to be desired.

My first book to read by this author but definitely not my last! Such a gripping novel that made it hard for me to put his book down once I started it. Highly recommend!!