We meet Emmett Farmer who is sent away from his family's farm to apprentice as a binder without knowing why this is happenings or what binding even is. The book is presented in three parts and Part One was, by far, my favourite as it was the one which best corresponded to the billing.

I wanted to love this and it started out well but then it just lost me completely.īilled as a magical tale about an apprentice 'book binder' - a person who can take away bad memories and bind them in books - the premise seemed interesting and highly novel. Soon, everything he thought he understood about his life will be dramatically rewritten. But while Seredith is an artisan, there are others of their kind, avaricious and amoral tradesman who use their talents for dark ends-and just as Emmett begins to settle into his new circumstances, he makes an astonishing discovery: one of the books has his name on it. In a vault under his mentor's workshop rows upon rows of books are meticulously stored. Within the pages of the books they create, secrets are concealed and the past is locked away. If there's something you need to erase, they can assist. If there's something you want to forget, a binder can help.

Within each one, they will capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory. Under the old woman's watchful eye, Emmett learns to handcraft the elegant leather-bound volumes. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born. For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a Bookbinder-a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice amongst their small community, but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse. Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. Imagine you could hide the darkest, most horrifying secret. In the tradition of Sarah Waters, Helene Wecker, and Jessie Burton, an atmospheric and mystery-laden historical novel set within a magical world where books are not stories but the repository of individual lives.

The binding book bridget collins