Three

“My name is Virginie.
Of the three of them, only Adrien speaks to me today.
Nina despises me.
As for Étienne, I want nothing more to do with him.
Yet they have fascinated me since childhood. I have never been as tightly bound to anyone as I am to those three.”

Adrien, Étienne, and Nina meet in primary school. They become instant friends. They are inseparable. They love the same things, the same music. Together they study and slack off, fight with teachers, and search for their place in their families and in the world of adults. They share their wounds and their desires. Together they weave dreams of a band that will leave the narrow-minded countryside behind and one day conquer Paris. No one and nothing will tear them apart. But do they really share everything? At the bottom of the lake where they spent hot afternoons and drunken nights, the wreckage of a car that has lain there for many years is discovered one day, and in it, human remains. Virginie, a journalist with a mysterious past, is writing a report on the event. Her memories gradually illuminate the web of relationships that connects the three childhood friends. What has become of them over the years? Why are all three so tense, waiting with bated breath for the results of the police investigation? Do the remains belong to someone they knew well? And how does all of this connect to their friendship?

Valérie Perrin's new book uses all the tricks, charms, and techniques we came to know and admire as readers of her novel Fresh Water for Flowers. She puts her entire wonderful literary talent at the service of the story of three friends, a story that will captivate us, absorb us, and never cease to fascinate us until its threads unravel before our eyes and come together again in a surprising conclusion. Is it a story about love and friendship, a romantic depiction of painful and vulnerable adolescence, a testimony to the bitter search for one's own identity, a tragic report on parents and children and their inability to love each other, a detective story, a novel about crime and punishment?

The novel Three is a moving celebration of friendship, love, and life with all its mystery, unpredictability, and dark twists and turns.