Friday Book Blogging

This week's book is a bit of a departure for me. The jacket includes a blurb defining it as a "puzzle novel" and that, I found is a very apt description. Elena Mauli Shapiro has constructed a picture story around a real-life box of artifacts claimed from the apartment of an elderly neighbor upon her death.
These keepsakes and the woman they belonged to, Louise Brunet, were real. The fanciful story of her mundane but fascinating life as told by Shapiro in 13, rue Thérèse are spun from imagination and speculation. What struck me about the book primarily was the way it haunts. The wisps of history give it just enough heft to be visible but still ghostly.
Also striking, oddly, is how incidental Louise Brunet is to the book. The people in her life and pivotal moments feature prominently, but on the whole, Louise is extraordinarily ordinary. The book follows Trevor Stratton, a visiting American professor and the devious secretary who plants the box in his office with the hope that he'll be consumed by the hunt.
Normally I wouldn't be choosing a ghost story/puzzle novel/picture book as a pick of the week, but despite some misguided attempts at poetic prose, 13, rue Thérèse pulls you into the story of Louise and Paris between the Wars and the fevers of Trevor, and the intertwining of the three.