“The Binding” succeeds in creating the magic it proposes: the experience of memory returning, a rush of recollection that can change the whole world, if only for one person at a time — or sometimes two.

The Binding is an unpretentious work of escapist fiction. The morality of the book is simple; the good are essentially noble and their enemies unambiguously wicked. The vaguely antiquated setting could as easily be Westeros or Hardy’s Wessex. At the heart of the novel is a love story that develops along a familiar trajectory, from immediate dislike to inexplicable flutters of the heart to full infatuation with its feeling of being “breathless and dizzy, as if my blood was too thin”. When the protagonists are happy, it’s spring outdoors. When things go wrong, a wet snow falls.... The Binding is a kissing novel par excellence, and on this level, it is like a wonderful meal made from a few simple ingredients: the feeling in your chest when you hold someone in your arms for the first time; the sight of a host of bluebells. In recent years, the state of the world has threatened to make us forget the simple pleasures of kisses and bluebells and thick novels that tell stories of heartbreak. Here is a book to help us remember.