The Braid - Laetitia Columbani

The Braid by Laetitia Colombani is such a beautiful little novel! It took me about three hours to get through so it's a pretty short read, and I really enjoyed the heartwarming story. The novel was published in 2017 and follows three women who are seemingly unconnected. Smita is an Indian mother who is desperate to give her daughter an education, despite her own profession as a latrine cleaner. When her daughter is rejected by her peers and school teachers, Smita decides that she needs to escape their life of poverty and inferiority, and so begins the treacherous journey across the country with little money and no food.

In Italy, Giulia works in her father's workshop, the last of its kind in Palermo, dyeing and washing strands of hair to be made into wigs. She lives a simplistic life until she meets an exotic man in the library where she spends her lunch hour reading, a man whom her family would deeply disapprove of. When her father is hospitalised and she discovers a life-altering secret about her family, she is forced to make a decision which has her whole family's future hanging in the balance. (This was my favourite of the three stories, mostly because Giulia is a fellow bookworm!)

Meanwhile, in Canada, Sarah is a high-flying lawyer who has just been made partner at her firm, is twice divorced and has three children. Her work is her entire life and she has never dropped the ball. But when she discovers that she has cancer, her world comes crashing down around her and the high-power, hyper-organised facade she likes to display begins to crumble. The novel alternates between the stories of the three women, jumping between each narrative throughout the chapters. I really enjoyed this style because each tale was as gripping as the others, so the structure keeps you engaged and on the edge of your seat! 

Up until the very last chapter I really had no idea how the three women's narratives were going to interweave, because of how different they all were. Colombani saves this right until the last couple of pages and it was such a lovely twist when I realised how these three amazing women connected from across the globe. The translation of this novel (by Louise Rogers Lalaurie) was slightly clunky in places and the prose was very simplistic because of this, but this gave the language a quaint sort of charm which I really adored. Initially I was drawn in by the dust jacket of this hardback Picador copy, without realising just how lovely this story would be, so I urge you to pick up a copy. Heartwarming and beautiful!