What a stupid, self-absorbed waste of a book. Run away. ( )

A good title and a quirky technique of extended explanatory footnotes is not enough to raise this self-indulgent memoir above the level of a whiny teen blog. It is not unusual or surprising to learn that a teenage girl thought of herself as weird or strange or unique. That doesn't make her weird or strange or unique. It just makes her an ordinary teenager. That she lives a life of unacknowledged privilege, flitting between homes in New York, Paris, and Cape Cod makes her self-regard near insufferable. Perhaps it is therefore unsurprising that the author has found herself in the world of high fashion, profile blogging, and illness narrative. It's all about the packaging, as evidenced by the fact that I picked this book up in a bookstore and bought it on the strength of its look and feel without knowing anything about it.

It isn't that LaCava is a bad writer. Just the opposite. That's the real disappointment here. I think she might be well worth reading if she channelled her teen angst and vaunted reading of books (does that really make someone special these days?) into crafting fiction. And the ability to speak another language might mark you out as brilliant if you are an insular white New Yorker, but I'm not sure it distinguishes you even from the taxi drivers you are so delighted at confounding in Paris, all of whom typically speak more than two languages. I look forward to what this writer produces once she gets over herself. But for now, not recommended. ( )

This book is a differently and originally written type of memoir. Moving to Paris as a child, Stephanie feels a strong disconnect to her own life and emotions. Objects, which had always been important to her, become even more so as she uses them to feel a connection to life. She collects archaic facts and figures about people and objects and these also help to fill in the void. Quite a different and inventive way to deal with her loneliness and subsequent depression. I love trivia, and O found the footnotes and pictures in this book wonderful. So many little factoids; that one out of every three bugs is a beetle, the meaning and poisonous qualities of lilies of the valley, the importance and history of rings and bangles and so much more. Also a unique way of showing the reader how her mind was working in its attempt to survive. I gave this book 4 stars because it isn't your usual type of whoa is me, abusive childhood type of memoir and for the unique way in which it is presented. ( )

Moving is hard. It's hard as a child and as an adult. And as strange as it sounds, it can be hardest on the awkward, shy, and introverted. Because it takes them so much time to warm up to people and they spend so much time in their own self-contained world, when they venture out of that comfortable solitude, they are more alone than the extroverted person who has had to leave behind a whole pack of friends. I know this because I am that person. And I have moved six times as a child and seven times as an adult. Nothing about moving is easy. But I've never had to move to another country and face cultural and language barriers in addition to the rest of the stresses of moving. Stephanie LaCava was just twelve when her father moved her family to France from the US. As she recounts in her unique and fascinating memoir, An Extraordinary Theory of Objects, this move, coming as it did when she was already feeling like a misfit, absolutely decimated her. As chronicled in these pages, she collected objects that became a way of keeping her anchored to the world, her way of reaching for connection during a painful and hard time of her life.

The memoir itself is told in a series of essays capturing memories linked through the cabinet of curiousities that LaCava was accumulating as she struggled to fit into her ex-pat life in suburban Paris. Many of the objects are illustrated in the text and are accompanied by extensively footnoted histories, breaking the narrative flow, causing the reader to retreat from the reality and sadness of LaCava's awkward, lonely teenaged years just as she herself did, folding herself into the objects that she collected and imbued with talismanic importance. It's a risky format as it will alienate some readers but others will be fascinated by this fragile girl's coping mechanism and terribly interested in the tangential information about the objects. I was the latter reader, but as LaCava herself says about the memoir as a whole, "Consider the source."

The memoir was moving and very personal, despite the footnote interruptions. It is indeed a bit odd, definitely unusual, and not what most people expect of a memoir. But it showcases beautifully the very remoteness of serious depression, the ache of being an outsider, and the loneliness of teenagers. It is not, however, a memoir of place but rather a person and Francophiles looking for tales of living in Paris will likely come away disappointed by the lack of Parisian feel here. The timing of the essays is not even and so while there are many pieces of her adolescence laid open to the readers' gaze, there are points glossed over and skipped entirely as well plus an essay or two at the end bringing LaCava from her unhappy years in France to her adulthood and to the genesis for the book. The very breadth of the pieces highlights the fact that these are not one overarching narrative but very definitely connected vignettes. There is an emotional distance here, a retreat behind the objects themselves, but it is one I recognize and appreciate, a coping mechanism even now. And LaCava knows that she is looking back at the objects of her childhood, using them as the scrim through which to view a painful and haunting piece of her life. I thoroughly enjoyed this rather non-traditional, quirky, gorgeously designed, and unexpected little book but readers will have to appreciate it for what it is instead of what it's not. ( )

I didn't know what to expect with this book. While the blurb tells me something ('A haunting and moving collection of original narratives that reveals an expatriate’s coming-of-age in Paris and the magic she finds in ordinary objects.') it didn't convey, I think, the real personality LaCava brings to her book. In further crankiness, I thought the subtitle ('A Memoir of an Outsider in Paris') as off-the-mark as the blurb. I found this book to be a memoir of depression, portrayed in a series of playful, odd vignettes, voiced by a lonely American desperate for connection and unable to find the tools to get out of her head and be more present in the world.

In the early '90s, LaCava's family moves to a suburb of Paris. She's sent to an international school where she finds herself isolated and unhappy. Teased by her classmates, she starts collecting objects in a kind of obsessive cataloging endeavor, as if naming and placing things would help her find herself. LaCava shares the experience of her crippling depression that broke my heart and resonated with me -- she and I seem to be approximately the same age, and while she was feeling like an outcast in '90s Paris, I was an outcast in '90s South Dakota. (Those who love the '90s will enjoy that bit of ambiance -- My So-Called Life and Nirvana feature in her vignettes, for example.)

The book's narrative style is quirky, and I think readers will either love or loathe it. Interspersed in her vignettes, LaCava includes footnotes about an object or person, usually providing some quick trivia or history. The object in question is almost always paired with one of illustrator Matthew Nelson's drawings. For LaCava, these objects are obviously totemic, deeply personal, and emotionally resonant, and the book's physical design -- cloth-bound cover, small size, and deckle-edged pages -- was tactile-ly satisfying, making me read a little more slowly, savor more, as if LaCava and I were in conversation.

While much of this novel worked for me, it isn't a perfect memoir. Readers wanting a cohesive narrative and accounting of time will be disappointed, I suspect. There is a very strong sense of distance between LaCava and the reader, perhaps an echo of the distance she feels from others. The narrative jumps from 1996 -- when she's 13 -- to 2009, and I found that a bit jarring. Toward the end, LaCava shifts from a self-introspective accounting of time to replaying conversations between herself and others which didn't always work for me. (In the seven-page vignette where she meets a former classmate, the conversation circles mostly around how pretty she is, and touching lightly upon a kind of throw away mystery from earlier.)

I found LaCava seemed to need to punish herself for her debilitating depression -- she remarks in a 2009 vignette about how selfish she was, and in a later 2011 vignette, she quotes her mother as saying the same thing. It broke my heart a little, for however 'badly' LaCava might have behaved as a girl-almost-a-teen, she obviously needed help. Moody doesn't equal selfish in my book and I don't know if she felt as if she had to make 'amends' to people in her life for her depression, but it made me angry on her behalf.

I wouldn't recommend this exactly as an armchair escape to Paris -- while LaCava shares a passion for certain places, she evokes some strongly while others sort of just float in the background. As a memoir of a time and a place, of one person's pain, this is lovely, sad, moving, and odd. ( )