June 1, 2017
When Madame Metier's controlling husband dies, she returns to her roots: crafting botanical creams with magical healing properties. In the process, she befriends Mademoiselle Object, an obsessive organizer with emotional outbursts, and her lover, Monsieur Sorbonne, a wayward knowledge enthusiast. Metier's touch cures rashes and even comas, and the two rely on her angelic aura to keep them peaceful and happy. Brief chapters alternate among these three personalities, whose stories are bizarre at the start in an almost Roald Dahllike way, then quickly turn spiritual. For example, Kingma's matter-of-fact tone conveys Metier's lack of grief after her husband passes in an eraless, nameless city. She then falls for a mysterious, blonde, blue-eyed man who, like her, puts people at ease with his celestial presence. Fans of well-known therapist and public speaker Kingma's many spiritual self-help books about relationships will embrace her first novel's soothing divine themes (when Metier expects a miracle, she immediately gets her wish.), while any reader looking for an otherworldly, quiet novel will appreciate the odd characters, lovely prose, and fable-like tone.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)