Blog Tour: Double Room – Anne Sénès, translated by Alice Banks

London, late 1990s. Stan, a young and promising French composer, is invited to arrange the music for a theatrical adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The play will never be staged, but Stan meets Liv, the love of his life, and their harmonious duo soon becomes a trio with the birth of their beloved daughter, Lisa. Stan’s world is filled with vibrant colour and melodic music, and under his wife and daughter’s gaze, his piano comes to life. 

Paris, today. After Liv’s fatal accident, Stan returns to France surrounded by darkness, no longer able to compose, and living in the Rabbit Hole, a home left to him by an aunt. He shares his life with Babette, a lifeguard and mother of a boy of Lisa’s age, and Laïvely, an AI machine of his own invention endowed with Liv’s voice, which he spent entire nights building after her death. But Stan remains haunted by his past. As the silence gradually gives way to noises, whistles and sighs – sometimes even a burst of laughter – and Laïvely seems to take on a life of its own, memories and reality fade and blur… And Stan’s new family implodes…

Anne Sénès was born in Paris and studied at the Sorbonne, where she obtained a PhD in English studies. Her passion for Anglo-Saxon literature and culture has taken her all over the world, from London to Miami, passing through the south of France. She is currently based on the Mediterranean coast, where she works as a journalist and translator. Chambre Double (Double Room) is her first literary novel.

My thoughts: This is quite a bittersweet book, Stan is mourning his late wife, having left London with his young (and almost entirely silent) daughter for a house his aunt left him. He’s in a new relationship, with Babette, but he can’t stop thinking about Liv. He’s built an AI a bit like Alexa or Siri, that chirps and sings away to itself. He’s a bit obsessed with it, and treats it like it’s alive. Having given it Liv’s voice, it haunts him.

As he reflects on the before and after, dwelling on his happiest moments, struggling to compose any new music, barely bothering with the people in his life, he risks losing the lively Babette for good.

I don’t think Stan should have moved Babette and her strange son into his house, he’s not really ready for a new relationship and definitely hasn’t recovered from his loss. The book is melancholic and sad, and Babette is all life and vibrancy. It won’t end well.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.