A beautiful book, authored by Gregoire Delacourt, and designed to make me view the mass of buttons scattered all over my Sprog’s bedroom carpet, in a different, ever-so-slightly-more-positive light!
Jocelyne, the main character in ‘The List of My Desires’, makes a meagre living running her own haberdashery shop and blogging about the odds and ends that make women happy.
The story begins with the sentence: ‘We’re always telling ourselves lies.’ (p.1)
And this uncompromising statement, neatly sums up the whole sorry tale, as Jocelyne tries to convince herself of the worthiness of her husband, whilst dropping regular hints to her readers that all is not quite as perfect as she makes out.
‘I am happy with Jo’, translates to the reader as I am not happy with Jo, as the man who once told her she ‘was beautiful’ is revealed as a foul-mouthed bully.
Jocelyne gets the win that every woman in an abusive relationship dreams of – a lottery ticket fortune! The means by which to get out into the wider world and to follow her own dreams. But, does she do it?
Or do the ‘lies’ continue?
I would hate to given you so many spoilers that you’ll never again set foot inside a haberdashery! (A what? Yes, there are still some specialist shops that have yet to be gobbled up by the supermarket giants!)
So I won’t!
Instead, I am going to start on the grand task of wading through my sprog’s button collection. Who knows? Perhaps, each button has a different story to tell me for my blog!
Watch this space.
Copyright owned by Jay Cool, July 2019
Image by VictorianLady from Pixabay
The Silly-Savvy Salopian in Suffolk: read, believe and write ... 