Book Review — The Binding by Bridget Collins

What Collins does impeccably is plainly state the magical element: some people can extract memories from people and store them in books. There's no real history or explanation for how or why — it's simply a universal truth and unexamined. The book is split into three acts, all written in first person. Emmett, our classic unreliable narrator, vaguely alludes to an incident that's happened to him, with no details of any sort. We know he's been ill, a shadow of his former self — but we have no idea what the incident was, or how it came to pass. Collins pulls a masterful trick by flipping the literary mode part way through; the first half of the book has us trying to piece together the past, then flips to dramatic irony which is a trick I haven't seen before — but it gives me life. While managing to not stray into effulgent purple period prose, Collins isn't shy of an evocative phrase. Despite, or maybe because of, the narrator we get flowery descriptions and metaphors aplenty. The misery…