Book Review :: The Binding, by Bridget Collins

The Binding by Bridget Collins
ISBN: 0008288593
Published by HarperCollins
on 2019-01-10
Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fiction
Pages: 448
Find at Harper Collins NZ
Goodreads

Imagine you could erase grief. Imagine you could remove pain. Imagine you could hide the darkest, most horrifying secret. Forever.

Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a Bookbinder—a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice among their small community but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse.

For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born. Under the old woman’s watchful eye, Emmett learns to hand-craft the elegant leather-bound volumes. Within each one they will capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory. If there’s something you want to forget, a binder can help. If there’s something you need to erase, they can assist. Within the pages of the books they create, secrets are concealed and the past is locked away. In a vault under his mentor’s workshop, rows upon rows of books are meticulously stored.

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. Soon, everything he thought he understood about his life will be dramatically rewritten.

Last updated on 14 October 2023

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What is The Binding by Bridget Collins about?

Emmett Farmer’s life is interrupted one day when he comes in off the farm to his parents telling him he has to leave to become an apprentice to a Binder. Reluctantly, he goes, despite his odd illness that leaves him weak and tired.

When he arrives at the Binder’s, he’s greeted by Seredith, an old woman who takes him under her wing and teaches him how to make books. Emmett doesn’t really know what Binding is, or how it works; all he knows is that clients arrive at the house, Seredith takes them into a room, and they leave later, a little different to when they arrived.

When Seredith dies, Emmett is taken to another Binder, but he isn’t anything like Emmett’s old mistress; he’s cruel, and harsh, and Emmett can’t stand him. What he does learn through this experience, however, is what Binding actually is; the taking away of memories and storing them in the pages of books. When people want a memory taken away, they see a Binder; they’d only ever get those memories back if the book was destroyed.

On a house visit, Emmett meets Lucian Darnay, the son of the man whose maid needs to be Bound. While he’s there, Emmett discovers a book with his name on it: at some point in time, Emmett had his memories taken away from him. With a rush of energy and a tussle, Emmett throws his book in the fire…and the memories flood back.

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My thoughts on The Binding

This book was all sorts of magical. I didn’t really know what to expect from The Binding, as the back cover blurb doesn’t give that much away, in terms of how the flow of the story might go. There were definitely elements to the book that surprised me and I wasn’t quite ready for, but after getting into to it a bit more, it was a little easier to call where it might go.

I always find it quite difficult to pick up a new book; starting a new story is tough, as is finishing – I want to live in the middle forever. But what I really enjoyed about the beginning of The Binding was how quickly it went from the first sentence to bam straight into the story. It’s right there in chapter one that Emmett up and leaves his family and his farm to head to Seredith’s, and we don’t have all this fluff and back story that needs to be set before the story really begins. I really appreciated this; it was like I started in the middle.

The story is told in three parts: in the first we follow Emmett (first person) as he begins his life as a Binder’s apprentice; in the second we jump back in time and live out Emmett’s memories which have come flooding back to him; and in the final part we jump back to the present, but change perspective, as Lucian (first person) tells us the final part of the story.

The Binding was wonderfully written (though there are some trigger warnings attached), and I was drawn into the story right from the first page. I’ve actually read another book by Collins, The Traitor Game, which was written under B.R. Collins and is a Young Adult story. I really enjoyed that when I read it back in 2016, however, The Binding is her first adult novel.

The concept that books hold people’s memories was a brilliant one, while it was always for sad reasons that people came to a Binder (you wouldn’t want to forget happy memories, though I guess). It’s a story about terrible people doing terrible, horrific things; it’s about family and friendship; it’s about the importance of the past, no matter how hard it may be; and it’s about love.

If you’re into fantasy with a little historic-fiction feel thrown in, pick up The Binding. Just take a look on Goodreads for a few trigger warnings.

Have you read The Binding? What did you think?

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I received this book for free from HarperCollins NZ in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.