The House I Loved / Tatiana de Rosnay

The grandiose avenues and squares of Paris, the impossible conceit of l’Etoile, the romantic uniformity of the golden stone facades and their wrought iron balconies—all this was imposed upon a medieval network of streets and passages. In the course of about fifteen years in the mid-1800s entire streets and neighborhoods were literally wiped off the map to make room for the new triumphant boulevards, parks, and grand public spaces. What effect did this have on the people of Paris and their neighborhoods? Tatiana de Rosnay (Sarah’s Key) attempts to investigate this by recreating a historic street that is scheduled to yield to Baron von Haussmann’s wrecking crews in order to make room for the new Boulevard Saint-Germain. Rose Bazelet, a widow, is the homeowner at the center of the story, a person whose life is so rooted in the neighborhood and the very house in which she lives, that she cannot consider abandoning it. Her life story is revealed chapter by chapter as the demolition team approaches her secret hiding place in her beloved home.

A fascinating insight into a particular time in Parisian history, this story reminded me a bit of Tracy Chevalier’s historical novels and made me want to find out more about Paris before it was transformed into the beauty it is today—we know what was gained, but The House I Loved attempts to show the reader what was lost.

[Oh, and the cover of the book is totally wrong—whoever photoshopped it and whoever approved it never read the story. But I don’t much like the British version either. The best one I saw was probably the Norwegian version since it gave a glimpse of an old neighborhood that was lost.]

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Murder in Passy, An Aimée Leduc Investigation / Cara Black

If you like your mysteries set in European locales, here’s a Parisian detective series that is sure to please. Aimée Leduc is a private eye, born of a French career detective and an absentee American mother (brief hints of angst over this in this installment). She’s appeared in about ten adventures, always set in iconic Parisian neighborhoods : Murder in the Marais, Murder in the Bastille, Murder in Montmartre, and Murder in the Latin Quarter , to name a few. In Murder in Passy (Paris’s tony XVIe arrondissement), Aimée finds herself mixed up in a murderous intrigue involving the French arm of the Basque nationalist movement. The final chase involves the kidnapping of a Spanish princess, a secret torture chamber used by the Gestapo in WWII, and a rooftop escape. The author sprinkles enough French words into the dialogue to either annoy you or make you feel your French 101 was not for nothing— Zut alors! très chic, c’est parfait, désolé, c’est tout! Oh, and Aimée’s frequent stop...

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Silent Patient / Alex Michaelides

A woman viciously murders her seemingly doting husband. We meet up with her several years later in a mental facility, where a therapist tries to get her to speak and to reveal her story. Who is innocent and who is the victim? The answer isn’t straightforward. The resolution to the novel features a real twist that will have the reader questioning the chronology of the different narrative threads in the book. A real page-turner.

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