translated by Adriana Hunter
As the first world war is drawing to a close, Toussaint Caillet finds himself heading home from the Val-de-Grace military hospital where he's been undergoing facial reconstruction for wounds received two years before. At home wait his wife Jeanne and Leonie, the daughter he barely knows. Their reunion should, they feel, be a time of utter joy, but both feel separated and changed by the years they've spent apart. Short, but moving, the story follows them, particularly Jeanne, as they attempt to build a new life when their future has been snatched away.
It seems to me, though it could just reflect my reading, that there are more books written about soldiers coming home from war, than there are about the necessary adjustment that has to be made by the women to whom they return. Winter Flowers places the emphasis on the wife, Jeanne, as she attempts to re-connect with the almost-stranger who has returned from war. While her daughter Leonie struggles to find a resemblance between the photograph of the handsome father in soldiers' uniform and this newcomer with his masked face, Jeanne can't seem to recognise him at an emotional level. His injuries have turned him into an uncommunicative, morose man; his mask, which is supposed to protect the world from the sight of him, also becoming a way to hide from the world.
Throughout the war both Toussaint and Jeanne have kept secrets - to spare the other from the horrors of the battlefield, or to hide the shortages of food and fuel that Paris is suffering from. These are comparatively small harmless deceits but they add to the gulf the two of them must now bridge. Slowly, gently, the story follows them as they reassess the missing years, and find a way to go forwards.
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