The Binding: The most captivating novel of 2019

How many people are walking around with half their lives missing, oblivious?

thought I saw hopelessness like a desert, featureless and impersonal, so vast that I couldn’t grasp the scale of it.

‘No.’ I keep my fist closed, holding on to the pain as if it’s an object.

We have worked very hard, you know, to better our reputation, so that people begin to understand that we are doctors of the soul and not witches. You do the craft no credit at all—

‘I don’t sell books. I keep them safe.

Her eyes slid away. A timber creaked above, and suddenly the house felt fragile, as if the thick walls were nothing but a dream.

Perhaps there was a way I could keep my memories, as if my own heart was a secret book made of muscle and blood. No one would know.

Binderies full of men who don’t understand what they’re doing – books for trade … We make books – we make beautiful books – out of love.’

it seemed lazy – unkind, even – to let her lie here in this icy stillness. I wanted her to have the dancing light and the whisper of the flames to keep her company … But what fool would heat a room with a corpse in it? And I could imagine de Havilland’s face when he saw me climbing the stairs with a basket of logs. I turned away. There was no point

‘There’s a moment when you start a binding, when the binder and the bound become one. You sit and wait for it. You let the room go silent. They’re afraid, they’re always afraid … It’s up to you, to listen, to wait. Then something mysterious happens. Your mind opens to theirs, and they let go. That’s when the memories come. We call that moment the k