I took a chance on this one, as my previous short-book-I-wouldn’t-normally-choose selection was so good. Also, because this is on the Booker International 2026 shortlist. Unfortunately, my streak of unusually good books ended with the previous one. This book was not good.
With the promised plot involving witches, I was expecting a bit more…witchcraft, or at least something interesting to happen. But after the opening section, wherein the main character (Lucie) initiates her weird daughters into their witchy powers, nothing really happens. Lucie is completely powerless in her life, not even really moving through or to anything – she is stationary, letting life and people move around and through her without advancing herself. By the end of the novel, she is alone, watching the lives of others proceed into the future. Much of the story reads like a series of dreams, with nonsensical elements presented as normal if unexplainable. By the end (which is mercifully quick at just 130 pages), the reader hasn’t learned enough about Lucie or anyone to care about what happens to them, and the dream-like quality of the story elements makes much of it unreliable.
The problem is not the translation – it’s that there is nothing to see here. A fantastic idea – witches in the modern world – gets very short shrift. The Booker prize announcement is today – let’s see if I was totally wrong about this one. (I was not.)
Fate: little book library.
4 – in 2026
8- female author
13 – place I’ve never been (in and around Poitiers, FR)
21 – translation
25 – new author to me
37 – non-mainstream
38 – drivel
rclr 
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