#RivetingReviews: Dymphna Flynn reviews TATA by Valérie Perrin, translated by Hildegard Serle

In 2025, readers of Elle magazine voted Valérie Perrin one of their top ten favourite French authors of all time (as well as being a fashion and lifestyle magazine, Elle has book pages that easily match the FT or Observer for depth and scope).

Perrin’s Tata is a sprawling epic focusing on an unmarried woman named Colette, a football-loving shoe-mender from the town of Gueugnon in Burgundy. As the novel opens, in 2010, her niece, Agnès, receives a phone call from the gendarmerie informing her that Colette has died. The problem is that Colette had already died three years ago, with Agnès organising the funeral. Called in to identify the corpse, Agnès must face the confusing reality that her aunt faked her death in 2007 and had been living in seclusion for three years.

Thus unravels a story resonant of Elena Ferrante – an ordinary woman’s life, it turns out, was rather complex. Colette, the tata, or auntie, of the title (who wouldn’t be seen dead being called auntie) was the most loyal supporter of Gueugnon’s football team and had a long-standing secret affair with one of their star players. She had also hidden and supported a cherished childhood friend from an abusive father and sacrificed much of her own talent and ability so her beloved brother could pursue his dreams of becoming a concert pianist.

And now Agnès, along with a gang of old friends, must find out whose body is in the grave that they buried under Colette’s first tombstone.

There is so much to admire in this page-turning novel, which covers themes close to Perrin’s heart: adoption, abandonment, family bonds and deep childhood wounds. Perrin herself grew up in this uninteresting industrial town, her father a semi-professional footballer who worked in a factory in the morning and trained in the afternoon. Everything in this novel is conveyed through the characters’ voices – quite literally, as Agnès finds a suitcase full of cassettes recorded by Colette on a tape machine that once belonged to the young niece. The recordings bring Colette to life for both the reader and for poor Agnès, and help her understand her rich family history. A history that encompasses circus life, classical music, and reveals earth-shattering family secrets going back to the Second World War. Agnès is a successful film director, and as the main narrator, offers us plenty of captivating dialogue and beguiling descriptions.

The whole intricate confection is revealed to the reader like peeling off the layers of an onion; or for me, like the plotlines in the superb French police TV series Engrenages, or ‘Spiral’, where characters become embroiled deeper and deeper into the truth, whether they like it or not.

Published in June 2026 in the UK, Tata was highly anticipated on both sides of the Channel, following the huge success of Perrin’s Fresh Water for Flowers. It’s rare for an English readership to be so excited by a European author, which is why Ferrante springs to mind. Tata is long but hugely enjoyable and comes to a mysterious end. And you absolutely must not miss the riveting acknowledgements: how many of the stories within this at times shocking novel are true?

Reviewed by Dymphna Flynn

TATA

Written by Valérie Perrin

Translated by Hildegard Serle

Published by Europa Editions (2026)

September 2026 #RivetingReviews titles are available to buy from bookshop.org.

Dymphna Flynn is development producer at Pier Productions and was a judge on the Costa Book Awards 2021. She reviews new fiction on Instagram @dymphnaflynn. Dymphna was a producer at BBC Arts for over twenty years.

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