Flowers of Darkness

Flowers of Darkness by Tatiana de Rosnay 256 pages

I’m still thinking about this novel almost a week after I finished reading it. It’s creepy and disturbing!

The story is set in the near-future in Paris (I peeked at other online reviews, and they guess the time frame to be somewhere anywhere from 10 to 50 years ahead.).  Life on the whole has not really changed that much, except that many of the world’s most recognizable landmarks are gone---having been bombed (The Eiffel Tower and the Sistine Chapel are two that are mentioned.) years earlier and climate change is in full bloom.

Clarissa Katsef has left her husband of twenty years because of his infidelity. She has applied for residency at one of the most high-apartment buildings in Paris, not that far from where the Eiffel Tower once stood. It’s a residence meant to encourage art---from musicians, to painters, to writers, to sculptors. Clarissa is a writer with several notable book to her name. She is accepted, to her surprise, and snags the top eighth floor apartment.

The apartment in very, very, very high-tech. It comes with a personal assistant, whom she has named Mrs. Dalloway, after her favorite writer Virginia Woolf.  Mrs. Dalloway is creepy al by herself! The residents are filmed at all times (for “security reasons”), except when they are in the toilet room and hit the option of “intimate mode” for sex while in the bedroom.

Clarissa is trying to figure out what direction her life should take. She has her daughter, Jordan, and her granddaughter, Andy, her first husband, Toby, and a cat named Chablis. Her current Francois is trying desperately to get her to come home. Clarissa had just walked out, leaving all her possessions behind.

It is Andy who first mentions the clicking noise and other odd happenings that Clarissa thought were the result of trying to write another book and the break-up of her marriage. Now Clarissa must investigate what in the heck she has gotten herself into. She makes friends with another resident, but he promptly disappears.

Intermixed with all this drama are a few journal entries where Clarissa tries to find Francois’ mistress, and what she discovers is horrifying and disturbing.  I won’t even get into that part of the novel.

Technology is great, it’s wonderful, but de Rosnay gives readers a peek into what our future holds that doesn’t really appeal to me.

 I don’t know really how to score this novel. I want to give it 5 stars since it has stuck with me; 3 stars for it’s creepy and disturbing nature. I can’t say I would recommend it, but I wouldn’t say whatever you do, don’t read this one. Therefore, Flowers of Darkness receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.