You'll find yourself reaching for this small book as for someone slipping away.
A Leopard-Skin Hat
A man tries to hold on to a lifelong friendship as the woman he loves becomes increasingly difficult to reach.
113g
Weighs the same as Balaclava + Bandana
- Ultralight
- Quiet Companion
- Fiction
Anne Serre wrote this beautiful, short, oblique work after the death of her sister, and it reads the way a held breath feels. The narrator struggles to hold onto a brilliant, beloved lifelong friend as mental illness slowly unravels her. You piece together the fragments the way you would if recovering a whole life from memory. There is an astonishing precision to Serre's evocation of the unnerving guilt of loving someone you can't save. You'll find yourself reaching for this small book as for someone slipping away.
Field notes
Serre wrote this novel in the six months following her younger sister's suicide, intending to create a beautiful memorial to her. But Fanny and the character known simply as the Narrator had already appeared in her earlier fiction. Serre returned to these invented figures, placing the storyteller himself under the observation of a separate, omniscient voice. She has said that the book came pouring out almost fully formed; her principal concern was arranging its scenes.