Double Room by Anne Sénès

June 22, 2025

Double Room

by Anna Sénès

Double Room by Anne Sénès

published on 19th June 2025 by

Orenda Books.

My thanks to the author and publisher for sending me a copy to review and

Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part on the tour.

Synopsis

London, late 1990s. Stan, a young and promising French composer, is invited to arrange the music for a theatrical adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The play will never be staged, but Stan meets Liv, the love of his life, and their harmonious duo soon becomes a trio with the birth of their beloved daughter, Lisa. Stan’s world is filled with vibrant colour and melodic music, and under his wife and daughter’s gaze, his piano comes to life. ORENDA BOOKS BOOKS Paris, today. After Liv’s fatal accident, Stan returns to France surrounded by darkness, no longer able to compose, and living in the Rabbit Hole, a home left to him by an aunt. He shares his life with Babette, a lifeguard and mother of a boy of Lisa’s age, and Laïvely, an AI machine of his own invention endowed with Liv’s voice, which he spent entire nights building after her death. But Stan remains haunted by his past. As the silence gradually gives way to noises, whistles and sighs – sometimes even a burst of laughter – and Laïvely seems to take on a life of its own, memories and reality fade and blur… And Stan’s new family implodes…

My Thoughts

A story of one man and how his past life haunts him and affects the present, and his current relationships, makes for an ingenious read. This will have you turning page after page to find out the links and the reality between what he has experienced and what he has created in Laïvely , an AI machine, which personally gives me the creeps.

I found myself questioning Stan’s sanity, the disturbing nature of Laïvely and Babette’s ability to initially accept this.

The storyline draws you deeper into the black hole that Stan finds himself being pulled into all the while building up an unease as to where the narrative is going. There were so many times when I wanted to tell him to stop and look what he had in the present rather than clinging to Liv through Laively, but obviously he wouldn't listen and it would change the plot.

I didn’t find this an easy read, though I did find it an intriguing one and hence I couldn’t put it down until I had finished it.

About Anne

Anne Sénès was born in Paris and studied at the Sorbonne, where she obtained a PhD in English studies. Her passion for Anglo-Saxon literature and culture has taken her all over the world, from London to Miami, passing through the south of France. She is currently based on the Mediterranean coast, where she works as a journalist and translator. Chambre Double (Double Room) is her first literary novel.