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The Binding: A Novel Kindle Edition
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE
Proclaimed as “truly spellbinding,” a “great fable” that “functions as transporting romance” by the Guardian, the runaway #1 international bestseller
"A rich, gothic entertainment that explores what books have trapped inside them and reminds us of the power of storytelling. Spellbinding.” — TRACY CHEVALIER
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 amongst 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.
An unforgettable novel of enchantment, mystery, memory, and forbidden love, The Binding is a beautiful homage to the allure and life-changing power of books—and a reminder to us all that knowledge can be its own kind of magic.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWilliam Morrow
- Publication dateApril 9, 2019
- File size2610 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Intense, immersive. . . . A stirring, highly original piece of storytelling and world-making.” — Sunday Times (UK)
“Bookbinders capture souls in this fantasy’s bleak Dickensian world. The novel’s most horrifying victim is the starving mother who doesn’t recognize her children because she had to sell her memories of them.” — New York Times, New Books We Recommend This Week”
“The Binding is a dark chocolate slice of cake with a surprising, satisfying seam of raspberry running through it. It is a rich, gothic entertainment that explores what books have trapped inside them and reminds us of the power of storytelling. Spellbinding.” — Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring
“The Binding succeeds in creating the magic it proposes: the experience of memory returning, a rush of recollection that can change the whole world, if only for one person at a time — or sometimes two.” — Naomi Novik, The New York Times Book Review
“Everyone keeps calling this novel spell ~binding~ and they! are! not! wrong! A true epic in every sense of the word.” — Cosmopolitan
“The Binding held me captive from the start and refused to set me free. It’s a beautifully crafted tale of dark magic and forbidden passion, where unspeakable cruelty is ultimately defeated by enduring love. Breathtaking!” — Ruth Hogan, author of The Keeper of Lost Things
“Pure magic. The kind of immersive storytelling that makes you forget your own name. I wish I had written it.” — Erin Kelly, author of He Said/She Said
“Truly spellbinding... Many readers of The Binding will simply sink gratefully into the pleasures of its pages, because, like all great fables, it also functions as transporting romance.” — The Guardian
“A captivating fantasy novel with forbidden love at its heart.” — Good Housekeeping (UK)
“The new ‘Have you read The Miniaturist’ will be ‘Have you read The Binding?’ … ‘Gorgeous’ and ‘spellbinding’ is the consensus among those who’ve already devoured it.” — Grazia, “The 2019 Hot List”
“More of an experience than a book, written with such grace and wisdom. Utterly brilliant.” — Joanna Cannon, author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep
“An original concept, beautifully written. Collins’ prose is spellbinding.” — Laura Purcell, author of The Silent Companions
“A moving, spellbinding book with a powerful love story at its heart and one of the best twists I’ve read in a long time. I fell into and inhabited and loved it. Such a deeply enjoyable and nourishing novel.” — Sandra Newman, author of The Heavens
“Intriguing, thought-provoking and heartbreaking … what a gorgeous book.” — Stella Duffy
“Beguiling … Dark and atmospheric.” — inews.co.uk
“What an astounding book … something entirely of its own. Brilliant concept, truly extraordinary writing and a killer plot.” — Anna Mazzola, author of The Unseeing
“A compulsive mix of historical and gothic fiction.” — Wiltshire Living
“A real treat . . . gothic, imaginative and dark.” — The Times (UK)
“Beguiling and mysterious … dark and atmospheric … The Binding is the kind of novel that practically demands fireside reading.” — The Herald (Glasgow)
“Using evocative language to express a lovingly told tale of lost memories, Collins wraps her story of a passionate, forbidden relationship in mystery and magic.” — Booklist
“The Binding is an imaginative, thought-provoking tale of how—for better and worse—moments can define who we become.” — BookPage
From the Back Cover
PROCLAIMED AS “TRULY SPELLBINDING,” A “GREAT FABLE” THAT “FUNCTIONS AS TRANSPORTING ROMANCE” BY THE GUARDIAN, THE RUNAWAY #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ARRIVES IN AMERICA
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, the bookbinder Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born. Under the old woman’s watchful eye, Emmett learns to handcraft 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 Seredith’s workshop, rows upon rows of books filled with memories are meticulously stored.
But while Seredith is an artisan, there are others of their kind, avaricious and amoral tradesmen, who use their talents for dark ends. And just as Emmett begins to settle into his new circumstances, he makes an astonishing discovery: there is a book with his name on it. Soon, everything he thought he understood about his life will be dramatically rewritten.
An unforgettable novel of enchantment, mystery, memory, and forbidden love, The Binding is a beautiful homage to the allure and life-changing power of books—and a reminder to us all that knowledge can be its own kind of magic.
About the Author
Bridget Collins is the international bestselling author of The Binding and The Betrayals. She is also the author of seven acclaimed books for young adults and has had two plays produced, one at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Bridget trained as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art after reading English at King’s College, Cambridge. She lives in Kent, United Kingdom.
Product details
- ASIN : B07CCMKKL6
- Publisher : William Morrow (April 9, 2019)
- Publication date : April 9, 2019
- Language : English
- File size : 2610 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 458 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #308,742 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,199 in Romance Literary Fiction
- #1,555 in Historical Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Fiction
- #1,827 in LGBTQ+ Fantasy (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Bridget Collins was born in 1981 in Kent, England. She always wanted to be an actor, and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art after studying English at King's College, Cambridge, but after she graduated from drama school she found herself starting to write a novel as a way to distract herself when she wasn't working - and discovered that she loved it... Her first published novel, The Traitor Game, won the Branford Boase Award and was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Since then she has published six more novels for teenagers. The Binding, her first adult novel, was published in January 2019, went straight to no. 2 in the Sunday Times bestseller list, was the bestselling adult debut hardback that year, and reached no. 1 on its paperback release. Her second adult novel, The Betrayals, was also a Sunday Times bestseller.
The Silence Factory will be published in May 2024.
Photos: copyright Symon Hamer
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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BRIDGET COLLINS
Review by Author Roy Murry
In the nineteenth century, Emmett is to be a binder - a person who takes an individual's memories and hides them in the pages of a book for safekeeping. His sexual memory is in question.
Reading THE BINDING will put the reader through a gamut of emotions that will self-analyze one's life. Would I like to have some of my life removed from my thought process?
I say no. How about you? However, the concept is written intriguingly by Ms. Collins in novel form.
When Emmett comes of age as a binder, he realizes the enormity of the falseness in the binding process, which includes the book of his male lover. Then, in an explosive and disturbing escapade, Emmett and his lover are free to think for themselves.
But are they? Worth the read for a person with an INQUISITIVE MIND.
There are other elements in here: a perverse father-son story, a world where young women get taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers and then "cleansed" by their binding. It's a nightmarish world of abuse, corruption and trickery. Balanced against that is the "pure" art of binding, which easily slides into the impure. I liked this play of purity and impurity. Collins knows a lot about human nature, and as both actor and writer, she enters into fiction as a sort of theatrical game. I like the juiciness of her writing and the pace of it, but I think I would have preferred the first draft of The Binding to what we have here, which is a sort of grab-bag of genres where the lovers are permitted few moments of mutual passion and nowhere to go at the end of it. All the same, for some younger readers (15 and up, say), I can see The Binding being very liberating.
It was refreshing to read about 2 people in love without it becoming a porn story. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will probably be one of the few books that I will read again in the future.
Top reviews from other countries
A reader can answer this question very well. A book holds the power to make a change. It holds the power to educate us, inform us, it has the power to drive our imaginations to such levels, it is unbelievable.
The world built in The Binding also conveys that a book can be dangerous in the hands of a wrong person. In this world, a book holds memories a person has rid themselves of. Most of them are bad memories that haunt a person. To be relieved of them, the person goes to a binder and gets those memories taken from them and bound in the form of a book. Most of these books don't see the light of day, because it is illegal to sell or read someone else's bound memories. Think of it like doctor-patient confidentiality. Then there are also people who share their experiences with others. There are also the books that are known as the fake, as in the ones that are written by people for the enjoyment of others. These are the only books that are allowed to be sold and read by people.
Emmet Farmer was a simple farm boy before he got sick. Now he is the shell of the man he used to be. People say that he may have been cursed by a witch. But what he actually had is known as the binder's fever. It's when the powers of a binder manifests. Seradith, a binder, sent a letter to Emmet wanting him to become her apprentice. The next day his apprenticeship begins under Seradith’s tutelage.
The story is written in three parts. The first two parts are narrated in Emmet’s POV and the last in that of Lucian Darnay. Part one talks about Emmet’s life after he was sick and found out that he was a binder. This part also includes his time learning and understanding his binder powers. The first part gave away very small hints of Emmet’s past which leaves a trail of questions.
Part two; there is a time jump. Here we get to know what actually happened in Emmet’s past, all the questions from part one are answered in this part. We get to see Emmet and Lucian’s relationship bloom from hate to love and then be ripped apart.
The final part of the book just slowly brings the book to a close.
All three parts connect so effortlessly together.
The author has masterfully written the book. This is a historical fiction book with a hint of fantasy. This is a love story between two boys in the late 19th century. At that time, their relationship was scorned and they were gravely punished for it. Even though people came in the way, their love for each other held no bounds. They fell in love with each other again and again, even if they forgot who the other was. They always came back to each other. The author has imagined the plot of the story beautifully.
The ending was very satisfying however it left a lot of unanswered questions like what happened to Emmet and Lucian? Where did they go after that? Were they able to stay together? Because of this reason the ending of the book felt like it ended abruptly. This was the only disappointing part. I also think that ending the book so suddenly is very clever because I cannot stop thinking about it. I cannot stop thinking about all the unanswered questions going through my mind and that makes the book even more appealing.
“We’ve been called witches since the beginning of time. Word-cunning, they used to call it—of a piece with invoking demons…We were burned for it too. The Crusade wasn’t new, we’ve always been scapegoats. Well, knowledge is always a kind of magic, I suppose.”
The magical atmosphere, the brilliant plot, the flawless writing style, the wonderful characters ... I haven't really found a reason in this book to stop me from giving it 5 stars. Perhaps the only cracked note is the finish, slightly rushed for my taste, but it's not enough to spoil everything else.
The second part of the book, with the gradual and intense construction of the love relationship between the two main characters, slowly destroyed my heart. I deeply felt myself Emmett's conflicting emotions, the progressive realization of his feelings for Lucian, the difficulty of not being able to be together with your loved one, the painful choice he had to make to save his family. It was all heartbreaking. And Lucian... oh, Lucian. I just wanted to hug him for most of the story.
“My heart was so light I could have flown. The memory of it takes my breath away. I didn’t know happiness was that simple.”
As I said, the ending is slightly rushed in my opinion, so maybe I should give 4.5 stars, but in my heart I feel I need to round up to 5.