The binding : a novel / Bridget Collins.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE

Proclaimed as "truly spellbinding," a "great fable" that "functions as transporting romance" by the Guardian, the runaway #1 international bestseller

"A rich, gothic entertainment that explores what books have trapped inside them and reminds us of the power of storytelling. Spellbinding." -- TRACY CHEVALIER

Imagine you could erase grief.

Imagine you could remove pain.

Imagine you could hide the darkest, most horrifying secret.

Forever.

Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a Bookbinder--a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice amongst their small community, but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse.

For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born. Under the old woman's watchful eye, Emmett learns to hand-craft the elegant leather-bound volumes. Within each one they will capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory. If there's something you want to forget, a binder can help. If there's something you need to erase, they can assist. Within the pages of the books they create, secrets are concealed and the past is locked away. In a vault under his mentor's workshop rows upon rows of books are meticulously stored.

But while Seredith is an artisan, there are others of their kind, avaricious and amoral tradesman who use their talents for dark ends--and just as Emmett begins to settle into his new circumstances, he makes an astonishing discovery: one of the books has his name on it. Soon, everything he thought he understood about his life will be dramatically rewritten.

An unforgettable novel of enchantment, mystery, memory, and forbidden love, The Binding is a beautiful homage to the allure and life-changing power of books--and a reminder to us all that knowledge can be its own kind of magic.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Books are dangerous things in Collins's alternate universe, a place vaguely reminiscent of 19th-century England. It's a world in which people visit book binders to rid themselves of painful or treacherous memories. Once their stories have been told and are bound between the pages of a book, the slate is wiped clean and their memories lose the power to hurt or haunt them. After having suffered some sort of mental collapse and no longer able to keep up with his farm chores, Emmett Farmer is sent to the workshop of one such binder to live and work as her apprentice. Leaving behind home and family, Emmett slowly regains his health while learning the binding trade. He is forbidden to enter the locked room where books are stored, so he spends many months marbling end pages, tooling leather book covers, and gilding edges. But his curiosity is piqued by the people who come and go from the inner sanctum, and the arrival of the lordly Lucian Darnay, with whom he senses a connection, changes everything. VERDICT With astonishing unpredictability, YA novelist Collins enters the adult arena with a spellbinding blend of history, mystery and fantasy. [See Prepub Alert, 10/15/18.]-Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont. © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Collins's solid first adult novel (following several YA novels) is a haunted, Dickensian fantasia. At the story's outset, teenage Emmett is a farmer's son in an alternate England at an indeterminate point in the past whose mind is riddled with gaps due to an unspecified illness. He receives a letter that calls him for an apprenticeship with a bookbinder, Seredith, who's reputed to be a witch. Emmett quickly discovers that Seredith is not your run-of-the-mill bookbinder: she draws traumatic memories out of people's minds and hides them away in books, thereby removing the memories from their minds. The first client Emmett meets is a man named Lucian Darnay; their encounters unsettle and even enrage both of them, but neither knows why. Emmett eventually discovers there is a book with his name on it, and it holds an essential secret about him. The relationship between Emmett and Lucian plays out satisfyingly, but the novel suffers from portentous conversations and a few plot points that the characters don't realistically react to. Emmett is a YA protagonist, too-sullen, reluctant, wrapped in victimhood. This is an enjoyable novel for readers of any age, but the story remains YA at its heart. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Collins' first foray into adult fiction presents an alternate world reminiscent of nineteenth-century England, brimming with correctness and repression, where books are literally made from memories. Binding is not just the craft of making an elegant tome but also the art of taking away selected recollections to help a person forget pain, grief, or a terrible secret. Emmett, a young apprentice binder, learns the craft from the elderly Seredith but also learns that many despise binders, believing they take a piece of a person's soul. He has been taught that a binder cannot steal anything, the memory must be offered freely, but there are unscrupulous buyers who sell volumes for personal profit, and even a binder can be bound. Emmett and an aristocrat's son unknowingly share a secret one that could destroy them both. Using evocative language to express a lovingly told tale of lost memories, Collins wraps her story of a passionate, forbidden relationship in mystery and magic.--Lucy Lockley Copyright 2019 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Collins' dystopian novel is set in an alternate England at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.In the absence of specific dates, this novel suggests its period with various clues: small farms, no plumbing, gaslight, horse-drawn carriages, factories but no trains. The backdrop is a Crusade that, indeterminate decades ago, caused books to be, if not entirely forbidden, then tightly regulated and socially taboo. Emmett is sent by his farmer parents to be apprenticed to an elderly Bookbinder named Seredith, who practices her craft in an isolated house near a marsh. Recently, Emmett suffered an illness which marked him as unfit for anything but binding, which, he rapidly learns, means more than handcrafting books. Customers come to Seredith to have their memories wiped of disturbing experiences through confessions she then enshrines in beautifully bound books and locks up. One such patron/patient is Lucian, a young gentleman who will figureor has figured; we won't know until latersignificantly in Emmett's life. There is a brisk underground trade in true bindings, as opposed to mere novels, and unscrupulous binders exploit this market. Among them is Mr. de Havilland, Seredith's son, who, after her suspicious death, appropriates her stock of secret bindings, which, like loaded guns, will make explosive appearances later. He also takes charge of Emmett. The middle section, in which Emmett is back on the farm with his parents and his sister, Alta, is a flashback in which we learn the source of Emmett's ailment and also more about the peasant culture that seems to hearken back to Britain's pre-Christian age. Except for the fact that a corrupt binder's wares play a role, the concluding section, told from Lucian's point of view, presents a mostly fact-based dystopia of Victorian aristocracy and its excesses. The worldview of this novel is bleak, but readers will not fail to appreciate the many sly analogies to the true-story-obsessed publishing world of today.Though set in an alternate universe, Collins' fictional world rings very true. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.