Books are dangerous things in Collins’s alternate universe, a place vaguely reminiscent of 19th-century England. It’s a world in which people visit book binders to rid themselves of painful or treacherous memories. Once their stories have been told and are bound between the pages of a book, the slate is wiped clean and their memories lose the power to hurt or haunt them.
After having suffered some sort of mental collapse and no longer able to keep up with his farm chores, Emmett Farmer is sent to the workshop of one such binder to live and work as her apprentice. Leaving behind home and family, Emmett slowly regains his health while learning the binding trade. He is forbidden to enter the locked room where books are stored, so he spends many months marbling end pages, tooling leather book covers, and gilding edges. But his curiosity is piqued by the people who come and go from the inner sanctum, and the arrival of the lordly Lucian Darnay, with whom he senses a connection, changes everything.
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After reading the blurb I was fully suckered into buying this book. And why wouldn’t I be? Books are dangerous things which hold the very secrets we wish to forget? Sign me up for that ride! However, it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t the thrilling ride I hoped it would be, it was more a lazy river than a rollercoaster.
Emmett arrives at the bookbinder’s house to begin his apprenticeship to become a book binder. It is long and laborious hours mending and tidying the leather and shelves, but he can’t help but be curious about the people who would visit someone with the power to remove your memories, and what possible things they could be hiding.
There is one room he is told he cannot go in, so of course he spends most of his time trying to figure out what actually happens behind said closed door. But when Lucian Darnay walks in, he knows he’s seen him before. If only he can remember when.
The premise behind this novel is brilliant, memories literally stored in books? Brilliant, love the idea. The execution? It left a lot to be desired. While the author clearly can descriptions well and has really encapsulated the time which it’s set in, I feel that this descriptions slow the novel down to a point where it’s difficult to keep reading, or it was for me anyway.
The way this book was pitched at the time, I honestly thought it would be a bit pacier than it was, with the sense of intrigue driving the novel forward. But the descriptions weighed the text down and really detached from what could have been a great book – think The Starless Sea etc. While The Starless Sea isn’t the fastest moving book there is, there is still enough action and drive to move the plot forwards which The Binding was missing.
Characters again were bogged down with weighty text, but there was clear character development which kept me going. A slow burn romance was a nice surprise, and the conclusion was satisfying. I was also hoping that we would delve more into the practice at some point (we didn’t), but there is enough there to keep you intrigued.
All in all, I think this book could have been great but it missed the mark for me. It was marketed like The Night Circus which I get, but it fell short in my opinion. I know their next book is out but I won’t be rushing to buy it. I think I’ll wait a read a couple of reviews myself and see if people think it’s the same or if it has some pace to it.
Just an FYI, I hate writing reviews where I wasn’t keen on the book, but the whole point of this blog is to talk/discuss my opinions of the books I’ve read, so please, if you thought this book was brilliant then please let me know. I’d love to hear that.
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