Fresh Water for Flowers: OVER 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD

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A beautiful and moving tale of a woman who is a caretaker at a cemetery, living alone and keeping a diary of every funeral she has attended to. As a cemetery keeper, Violette is surrounded by other people’s death and mourning: a connoisseur of funerals, she believes you can understand and maybe even judge someone’s life by the send-off they get. She has been “destroyed,” though, and as a result has retreated into herself, leaving love and happiness to others—until things change and she resolves that “unhappiness has to stop someday,” even unhappiness stemming from a grief as intense as hers for her dead daughter Léonine. A deserved international sensation, Fresh Water for Flowers is a book that raises many questions about the living and the dead, about the past and the secrets buried. In reality, this means that Violette operates the gates about 15 times a day while Philippe plays videogames, rides his motorcycle, and hooks up with other women.

No longer as young as she once was, she devotes her time to those who reside inside the gates of the cemetery where she lives, even if they no longer have that luxury.Instead of being buried with her husband, Irene left instructions to inter her with a man named Gabriel Prudent, who's in Violette's cemetery. Sabemos de toda esta duplicidade através de um diário que chega às mãos de Violette e pelas personagens que se cruzam com ela no cemitério, que contam histórias dos falecidos que vêm enterrar ou visitar.

The grave Julien is looking for, and his mother’s story of clandestine love, is intertwined with Violette’s own secret past.

The present day part of the story takes place when Violette is about 50 and she is happy, in a way one can be happy despite a hollow place in one's heart that will never be filled. It soon becomes clear that the grave Julien is looking for belongs to his mother’s one-time lover, and that his mother’s story of clandestine love is intertwined with Violette’s own secret past. Come una vestale discreta cammina lungo i viali del camposanto, avendo l’intima consapevolezza che un giorno tutti i cimiteri diventeranno giardini. Very much a quiet book, Fresh Water for Flowers has a great wisdom, each chapter opening with a magical quotation that forces the reader to stop and to take a moment.