{"id":530323,"date":"2025-12-18T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T06:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=530323"},"modified":"2025-12-18T08:05:48","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T07:05:48","slug":"the-door-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/literature\/the-door-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"When the leaves fall, so do the dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every month, our literary critic puts a work through a kaleidoscope, collecting the images it projects and reconstructing their diffractions. Even if the flashes of genius turn out to be shards of glass.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

We've finally entered the full force of autumn, with its pallid light, lengthening evenings (unlike the French prime ministers' terms of office) and rain drumming on wind-beaten shutters. And with it, the desire to stay by the fire, wrapped in the scent of cinnamon. And for that, two invigorating companions of choice: Le Livre des portes<\/em> by Gareth Brown and La Librairie des chats noirs<\/em> by Piergiorgio Pulixi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Close your door to travel<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There are a number of ingredients for an excellent autumn evening in the warmth of your own home. First, mystery. Then, an ounce of crime. And finally, travel. The Book of Doors<\/em> contains all this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This novel tells the story of Cassie, a self-effacing young woman who works in a small New York bookshop and leads a rather quiet life, until the evening when one of her favorite customers, a charming old man, collapses and dies before her very eyes. Not without leaving her a curious leather book, with no author, no date, just a title engraved in fine gold. She doesn't understand why it was given to her, but what she understands even less is how it transported her to Venice in a split second. For this booklet has a power as natural as it is diabolical: it literally opens doors. Doors to other cities, other lives, and soon other times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cassie soon finds herself embroiled in an esoteric hunt by obsessive collectors and an underground order of traveling readers, where every page turned is a step into the unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this debut novel, Gareth Brown has succeeded in building an atmosphere of a November afternoon, bathed in hushed secrets, evil creatures on the prowl, icy fog seeping into alleyways and bare branches clawing at the light of seemingly unoccupied houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n