Review of 'The Binding' by Bridget Collins

I've finally made it to the reviewing the last book I read in 2019. I mean, I could have done with getting here five months ago, but this'll do. It means I'm actually less than six months behind and that maybe there's a chance I'll catch up this year? Unlikely, but let's see.

Set in the 19th Century-ish, The Binding explores a world where books are dangerous. Emmett Farmer has only seen one in his life and it's shortly seized off of him by his parents. There are imitation books, sold without permission of the person who the story is about, but the real books hold the most danger. Binding is the process of a binder taking bad memories from the mind of the person wanting to be bound. They're bound into a book which is kept safe forever and the person who is bound cannot remember what has gone into the book or being bound. Every time a person is bound they lose a little of themselves.

After having a breakdown whilst trying to do his normal work on a farm, Emmett's family sends him to live with a binder in the hope that she can cure him. She starts to teach him how to bind, focusing on the physical books themselves, but Emmett only gets more ill. He needs to find out what really happens when people are bound and why they do it, but he finds out more about himself than he ever anticipated when he does so.

This was one of my favourite books of 2019. It started off incredibly slowly, with a lot of world building and heavy description but STICK WITH IT. This has some of the best LGBT representation in a book that isn't YA fiction I've read, and I was really glad to see it so well done in adult fantasy. The romance in it is beautifully written and honestly I've been recommending it over and over again since I read it.

I found myself really intrigued by the idea of binding, and at first as I was reading it all I could consider was that people would use it to destroy traumatic memories that have damaged them or upset them. However, the book delved into a much darker side of it: forcing other people to be bound so they forget what you have done to them, and being bound so that you can live a guilt free life by forgetting terrible things you've done.

In the second half of the book I was tearing through the pages trying to see what happened next after the very slow start and I couldn't put it down. I would recommend this for fans of magic realism and Victorian-style novels.

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