After La petite boutique japonaise (The Little Japanese Shop), which was widely sold abroad, Isabelle Artus has written another delightful and humorous novel with funny and endearing characters. It showcases friendship and takes us backstage into the secretive world of women’s magazines.

Étienne wakes up at the hospital. He cannot move or speak. What happened? His loved ones parade in one after another. Each person is bursting with energy, with words and with their own past. But what is Etienne’s past? What must he do to get his memory back?

Three women help him get better: his childhood friend, Alma-Marie, Olympe, a work colleague who might just be his girlfriend as well, and the very curious Prudence, who is as adept with psychoanalysis as she is with voodoo. With compelling humor and disarming honesty, each one of them comes to visit Etienne regularly. Bit by bit, as he heals, the puzzle of his past becomes complete and a family secret is revealed.Is this secret what caused Étienne’s accident? Or did the accident happen so the secret would finally come to light?