Since their parents and aunts passed away, Gustave and Madeleine live together in the large house that creaks and groans, where it is sometimes drafty and smells of cloves or beeswax. He takes photographs, wanders through the landscape, and tries to write, while she tends to the bees, the kittens, and the rotting beams of the barn. When she looks up at the sky, she thinks of Ranger 7 or Surveyor 1.

In the village, they are known as the brother and sister, both of whom now have white hair and sometimes need a cane. However, it is mainly Madeleine who is recognized, from church or the shop; he, on the other hand, a dreamer, an oddball, remains a mystery.

For his second novel, Bruno Pellegrino drew inspiration from the life of the Swiss poet and photographer Gustave Roud. He followed traces that are still very much alive, as well as those that are almost fading away.

"Where August is an autumn month" tells of the stillness of days, a life between pale green fields, of things coming to an end, and of what remains.

"The rest could be finished in daylight and with bare hands. But Gustave prefers to stick with the red twilight and his plastic-wrapped fingers. He rolls the now light-insensitive film off the spool and rinses it with clear water. As far as he can tell, the yield is not particularly good. But what does it matter? He hangs the negatives on a line like Madeleine hangs the laundry in the garden. Aside from the drip of the liquid, everything is quiet: the room, the house, the world.".