A charming and funny debut novel with a protagonist that is reminiscent of Amélie Poulain and Eleonore Oliphant…

Our story begins in the outskirts of Paris where Eva, a taxidermist, promises to honor a rather unusual order: the hamster-lion. A little boy has come into her workshop with his dead hamster and wants Eva to give it the mane of a lion. Although she accepts this challenge, she can find no way to actually create such a beast until the only logical solution comes to her — she goes to the museum of natural history, finds a lion on display and cuts off a piece of its hair.

But when the mother comes with her son to pick up the hamster-lion she pretty much says “never mind”; she simply bought her son a new hamster.

And so begins the most unusual and unexpected rivalry Eva has ever known.

But that’s just part of our story. A continuously entertaining part of our story but it is really about Eva and her self-imposed solitude. Her mother died when she was a young girl and she has no relationship with her father despite the fact that he lives one floor above hers. She has no relationship with anyone, really, until she meets Neighbor who comes to her workshop so that she could stuff his dead cat. Which she does.

Neighbor turns out to become a person she can rely on, someone who helps her in her rivalry against the hamster-lion mother and someone who helps her rebuild her relationship with her father. Not least of all, he’s someone who helps her find her place in the world.

Nicolas Garma-Berman was born in 1981; his father is a translator and his mother is Argentine. He lives in Marseille. This is his first novel.