Author: Crossman, Susanna
Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
Published on 22 May 2025 by Bluemoose Books Ltd in the United Kingdom.
Hardback | 195 pages
137 x 205 x 26 | 302g
The siesta hour, France. Bees fly inlavender bushes. Anna has just come home, but something is wrong. She fearsnothing will ever be right again. Annais haunted by the death of her only child, Lou. After her son’s death, Anna has a breakdown and is hospitalized. In thepsychiatric ward, Anna becomes determined to undo death by writing everythingdown in a set of orange notebooks: fragments and tales about bees, deathrituals, her London childhood, the story of her relationship with Lou’s Basquefather, Antton, their meeting on a ferry on the day Princess Diana died, Anna’sconsequent obsession with the English Channel, a cursed trench coat, theduplicity of beige, Lou’s Jewish and Basque heritage, and the role of beesbecause their wax made the candles that light the path of the dead. In the hospital Anna meets Yann, a Breton Seacaptain. Together, they go on an Orphic journey to the underworld,sailing from Finistère in his boat to the middle of the English Channel, to tryand find Lou at the exact point where his destiny began. Myth and reality collide,allowing Anna to begin the healing process.