Sometimes it's that unexpected phone call that brings us back home again — and that's exactly how Dear Aunt begins.
Agnès is a film director, recently divorced and back in Paris with her teenage daughter, stuck in a kind of stagnant everyday life where she neither works nor sees others. Then a police commissioner calls and tells her that her aunt Colette has been found dead in her home in a small town in Burgundy, and Agnès is the only relative. The only problem is that Colette died — and was buried — three years ago.
It forces Agnès back to a place she thought she had left behind for good, to childhood friends she had lost touch with, and to a box full of recorded cassette tapes her aunt left behind. Through the tapes, she slowly unravels who her aunt really was—and what actually happened to her. It is a book about family ties that never quite let go, about secrets that take you further than you think, and about finding your way home by understanding someone else better.
The French author behind the book Valerie Perrin, who then published his breakthrough novel Fresh water for the flowers — who has sold over 300,000 copies in Sweden alone — has become one of France's most widely read storytellers. Dear Aunt is her third novel and nominated for Book of the Year 2026. Perrin is known for his way of weaving together the present and the past, and for writing about people and making them appear warm even when their history is difficult.
Worth knowing before you settle down: this one is more enigmatic and layered than a light Sunday novel — Perrin weaves a lot of heavy threads beneath the surface, and it's the mystery and family history that drive the story forward rather than the purely relaxing. But the core is still the same as in her other books: to be seen, to be understood, and to find your way back to those you thought you had lost.
Bring it to a comfortable armchair, preferably with plenty of time — this is a book you want to read from beginning to end.
A forward push from me,
Maria