I could keep reading about Violette for another 1000 pages. This novel is full of little affectations, but instead of feeling quirky or dissonant it is funny, passionate, and sorrowful. Slowly coming up to speed on the characters’ lives (and the central mystery, if it can be called that) is a gripping experience, and ultimately it is all a window into Violette’s mind. This is a story about her, her family, her world. It is told in first person masterfully, too, and meanwhile Perrin is able to switch to other third- or first-person perspectives as necessary without the flow of the story faltering or becoming atonal. There’s a lyric from The National that comes to mind:

That’s what reading this book was like. It floated around inside me and took me over. It is possible to live a meaningful life. It is possible to live for one’s self and not be alone; it turns out the self is not so separable from the ones it loves.