![]() ![]() In the first part, we follow the teenage hero Emmett, who has been sent to apprentice one of the mysterious book-binders after a lengthy and unspecified illness. It just feels like an unpretentiously beautiful story that rather organically draws on everything with very little self-consciousness. ![]() That being said, The Binding really really doesn’t feel like it’s doing that. I have a bit of a problem with the way in which established “literary” authors poach from genre fiction to set the boundaries of their stories while still plugging their novels as literary rather than fantasy or sci-fi etc. It is one of the most genuinely romantic books I’ve ever read its shape and construction (and marketing) feel quite “literary fiction” its setting is historical, or rather alternate-historical, and the central conceit of the binding itself is decidedly magical realism. ![]() Having read it, I really don’t know what genre I would peg The Binding as being. I have to admit, I initially wanted to read The Binding mainly because I kept seeing the gorgeous cover in the bookshop where I used to work and I coveted it, which feels quite appropriate. Set in an alternate past in which the binding of books is a magical process, people have their most traumatic memories erased and bound into books. ![]()
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