louisekf 's review for:

Flowers of Darkness by Tatiana de Rosnay

3.0

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Flowers of Darkness is set in a not-so-distant-future Paris, a city which had seen, years before, the destruction of the Eiffel Tower and the whole neighborhood around it, and is feeling the effects of climate change (bees have died, with devastating consequences for gardens, for example). In the middle of this, Clarissa Katsef, a writer in her 60s, leaves her husband because of a very disturbing betrayal, and finds an apartment in a new building devoted especially to artists, run by a mysterious organization abbreviated as CASA. The problem is that Clarissa feels she’s being constantly spied on. CASA provides very advanced AI (artificial intelligence) to its artists, from the super-customized virtual assistant that Clarissa names Mrs. Dalloway (she’s a huge Virginia Woolf fan) to retinal scans instead of keys, to cameras everywhere - and I mean everywhere. Clarissa’s cat seems to pick up on the weirdness even before Clarissa does. The story bounces between Clarissa’s growing unease with her new surroundings, Clarissa’s backstory and a gradual revelation of why she left her husband.

It kept my interest but somehow didn’t move me very much, unlike her earlier book, Sarah’s Key. The ending - well, it was a letdown. This book felt much longer than approximately 250 pages.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read an advance readers copy of this book. All opinions are my own.