One morning, Louise, 45, is suddenly unable to step out of her car. Sweats, anxieties, palpitations… she is having an inexplicable panic attack. She is tetanized and simply cannot set foot outside.

Lucien de Rubempré, a young, lower-class poet, leaves his family’s printing house for Paris. Soon, he learns the dark side of the arts business as he tries to stay true to his dreams.

What do you dream of when you’re 16-years-old and in a seaside resort in Normandy in the 1980s? A best friend? A lifelong teen pact? Scooting off on adventures on a boat or a motorbike? Living life at breakneck speed? No. You dream of death. Because you can’t get a bigger kick than dying. And that’s why you save it till the very end. The summer holidays are just beginning, and this story recounts how Alexis grew into himself.

Eugenie has a unique gift: she hears and sees the dead. When her family discovers her secret, at the end of the 19th century, she is taken by her father and brother to the neurological clinic at La Pitié Salpêtrière with no possibility of escaping her fate. Her destiny becomes entwined with that of Geneviève, a nurse at the hospital.