Marco's left town for the countryside. He's left his psychologist because he feels he's doing better. He's quit his job as a reporter because he's had enough of photographing corpses. He gets himself a little cottage in the heart of rural France, where he lives with his cat, Adolf. He throws out all his work, and cuts ties with his employer. That night, he has his first panic attack. It's not long before he meets the lovely Emilie, and also the wise and good-natured old man who lives in the cottage just across the way... but who, it turns out, isn't exactly what he seems...
Back to the interrogation room nestled at the heart of that gray, clouded metropolis, and Polza's story continues. We soon find ourselves extracted from that police station, the metaphor for everything that this extraordinary protagonist seeks to escape (law, bureaucracy, morality, social codes, restriction), and returned to the beautiful but savage rural backdrop of Polza Mancini's quest for transcendance. His wanderings eventually bring him to the underground hideout of the so-called "Saint Jacky", a prolific drug dealer who uses his profits to feed his obsession: books. But this avid reader also has his dark side, as Mancini soon discovers.
This is the third volume of one of the most remarkable works of the contemporary comic books scene. In "Precious Things," Marco has to face up to Emilie's maternal longing and the aftermath of the death of his father. Through various little things, such as old photos and insignificant events, Larcenet pursues his inquisition of the human soul with incredible wisdom and insight.
The shipyard shuts down, Marco becomes a father, his mother learns how to live alone, a man dies in the countryside, and a journalist flies off the handle. Through the little things, marked moments and commonplace sadness, Manu Larcenet concludes his portrait of an ordinary man, and the imperfections that we're all familiar with. Thus ends one of the greatest successes of contemporary European comics.