A Publishers Weekly Most Anticipated Book
Valérie Perrin’s first new novel since her breakout bestseller Fresh Water for Flowers
"Valérie Perrin is a prodigious storyteller."―Elle
"Perrin’s most ambitious, most intimate, most liberating, most important book yet."―Le Parisien
Tata begins with a mystery―Agnés receives a phone call from a local policeman saying she must come to Gueugnon in the French provinces to identify the body of her aunt Colette. This comes as a shock because, as far as Agnés knows, her beloved Aunt Colette died three years earlier. From this call on, Perrin’s “most ambitious novel yet” opens into a rich and delectably propulsive mix of multigenerational family saga, suspenseful chase novel, and vibrant testament to the resiliency and ingenuity of women who choose to carve out a destiny of their own.
Tata teems with unforgettable characters―circus performers, piano prodigies, murderers, doppelgängers, survivors, cops, abusers, footballers, filmmakers and secret lovers, to name a few―and is the most incontrovertible proof thus far that there is nobody better than Valérie Perrin at capturing the ebb and flow of life in all its glorious unpredictability. At the novel’s center is Colette, Agnés’s beloved tata, her father’s sister, whose decision to fake her own death and disappear from the world at first seems inexplicable. From this deception, however, emerges an intricate, beautifully woven story about a remarkable woman told with humor, delicacy, and depth.
WHAT EARLY READERS ARE SAYING
"A cocktail of emotions."
"Magnificent."
"Impossible to put down!"
"A novel you devour and simply cannot close until you've reached the last page."
"Exceptional."
"After reading such a novel, I could stop reading altogether."
Valérie Perrin was born in 1967 in France. Her novel Forgotten on Sunday (2015) won the Booksellers Choice Award in France and has been long-selling bestseller since publication. Her English-language debut, Fresh Water for Flowers (Europa, 2020) won the Maison de la Presse Prize, the Paperback Readers Prize, and was named a 2020 ABA Indies Introduce and Indie Next List title. It has been translated into over thirty languages. Figaro Littéraire named Perrin one of the ten best-selling authors in France in 2019, and in Italy, Fresh Water for Flowers was the bestselling book of 2020.
Hildegarde Serle graduated in French from Oxford University. After working as a newspaper subeditor in London for many years, she obtained the Chartered Institute of Linguists Diploma in Translation. She is the translator of The Mirror Visitor Quartet.
