Zazoo

Zazoo, almost 14, lives with her adoptive grandfather, who brought her from Vietnam to his village in France when she was just two years old. They have many things in common, including a love of poetry—and a tangled history that Zazoo is only now beginning to understand. She has always known that Grand-Pierre was involved in World War II, but not what that meant, and she never imagined that he had fought in Vietnam.A boy who rides his bicycle into her village one morning asks a question from which many stories begin to unfold. The bicycle boy, Marius, and the middle-aged local pharmacist turn out to have surprising connections with Zazoo and Grand-Pierre. With the help of new and old friends, Zazoo makes the bittersweet discovery that the past isn’t over, but that it informs and colors the present and the future. Richly textured and beautifully written, Zazoo is an unusual and engrossing novel.