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kirstena's review against another edition
1.0
Odd little book. I think I only finished it because I could in about 90 minutes. I didn't connect with the author, and sadly I bored quickly of the hefty, though intentional, footnotes.
nomadreader's review against another edition
4.0
(originally published at http://nomadreader.blogspot.com)
The basics: An Extraordinary Theory of Objects: A Memoir of an Outsider in Paris is more about the objects than it is in Paris. In truth, Stephanie LaCava considers herself an outsider whether or not she's in Paris and traces her emotional history through objects.
My thoughts: An Extraordinary Theory of Objects is a unique memoir. It's told in vignettes of memories and objects. Drawings are paired with lengthy footnotes in the midst of the text. Initially, it was somewhat difficult to follow these dual narratives, and shifting my focus to the footnotes detracted from LaCava's fluid prose. Truthfully, I enjoyed LaCava's writing more than the footnotes. They drawings of the objects added a rich detail, but the footnotes, while often filled with fascinating trivia, didn't have the depth of LaCava's emotional memories. About half-way through this slim volume, I took a different approach. I read each vignette in its entirety, then I went back and read each footnote in it. This strategy worked beautifully, and the objects themselves were more intriguing when taken together than when interspersed in the narrative.
The book is itself an object of curiosity. It's rare I recommend a print book over an e-text, but with An Extraordinary Theory of Objects, I would. It's a book to keep in view and observe your guests flipping through trying to figure out just what exactly it is.
The verdict: An Extraordinary Theory of Objects is at its most extraordinary when LaCava shares her personal journey rather than her thoroughly researched beloved objects. Her journey and introspection were haunting and honest. Many of the vignettes would work well as a standalone, but as a whole, this book is as beguiling as Stephanie LaCava herself.
The basics: An Extraordinary Theory of Objects: A Memoir of an Outsider in Paris is more about the objects than it is in Paris. In truth, Stephanie LaCava considers herself an outsider whether or not she's in Paris and traces her emotional history through objects.
My thoughts: An Extraordinary Theory of Objects is a unique memoir. It's told in vignettes of memories and objects. Drawings are paired with lengthy footnotes in the midst of the text. Initially, it was somewhat difficult to follow these dual narratives, and shifting my focus to the footnotes detracted from LaCava's fluid prose. Truthfully, I enjoyed LaCava's writing more than the footnotes. They drawings of the objects added a rich detail, but the footnotes, while often filled with fascinating trivia, didn't have the depth of LaCava's emotional memories. About half-way through this slim volume, I took a different approach. I read each vignette in its entirety, then I went back and read each footnote in it. This strategy worked beautifully, and the objects themselves were more intriguing when taken together than when interspersed in the narrative.
The book is itself an object of curiosity. It's rare I recommend a print book over an e-text, but with An Extraordinary Theory of Objects, I would. It's a book to keep in view and observe your guests flipping through trying to figure out just what exactly it is.
The verdict: An Extraordinary Theory of Objects is at its most extraordinary when LaCava shares her personal journey rather than her thoroughly researched beloved objects. Her journey and introspection were haunting and honest. Many of the vignettes would work well as a standalone, but as a whole, this book is as beguiling as Stephanie LaCava herself.
kaylyssa's review against another edition
2.0
The two stars are for the look and feel of the book itself and for Matthew Nelson's lovely drawings.
I found this book impossible to relate to. The obsession with objects and the book-report-like footnotes served no purpose but to keep the reader at a distance by avoiding human emotion. There is no humor in the book; instead, LaCava takes herself and her experience so seriously that it's confusing. I wanted to laugh when she walked out of the dance and threw herself face-down into the dirt with loneliness and shame--not in a cruel way, but in an understanding, I've-been-there way. But LaCava does not let you say "I've been there" and she doesn not let you laugh. She wants to be "strange" and to describe a unique and unusual experience that is really anything but. Not only that, but she doesn't take you there with her either, she pushes you away and describes it to you from a distance.
The sections on her childhood in Paris, what tiny snippets we are allowed to read between the bloated, ridiculous footnotes, seem pretty typical to me, despite her repeated and repetitive insistance that she is "strange." Most people I know, myself included, had turbulent teenage years where they went through some dark shit. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of people. Yet the whole idea of the book seems to be that LaCava's turbulent teenage years are "crazy" in some special, elevated way. I can't help but wonder if this results from growing up filthy rich and not realizing that the rest of the world is actually just like you. To be fair, it does seem like LaCava is actually naive to the experience of the rest of the world. I don't think she would have written this book if she didn't truly believe she was very, very special. Ironically, if she realized she was not unique, I think she would have written a better book.
The extended pre-epilogue nature of the later sections, her big Return to France (she does realize some people never get to go to France, right? That some people can't afford to travel the world? Just wondering), seem to be mostly about how good she is at speaking French to taxi drivers. The fact that the book ends with her breaking away from her habit of eating only green beans to ordering a salad Nicoise is just a perfect way to sum up this ridiculous and self-absorbed memoir.
Also, just a side note, I found it hard not to barf around the 35th time she described herself as being thin and elf-like. For someone who is asking her readers for pity, she sure is full of herself.
If you want to glimpse into the fantastical world of the very rich and their completely out of touch worldviews, read this book. Otherwise, buy it and put it on your bookshelf for decoration, as it is very pretty.
I found this book impossible to relate to. The obsession with objects and the book-report-like footnotes served no purpose but to keep the reader at a distance by avoiding human emotion. There is no humor in the book; instead, LaCava takes herself and her experience so seriously that it's confusing. I wanted to laugh when she walked out of the dance and threw herself face-down into the dirt with loneliness and shame--not in a cruel way, but in an understanding, I've-been-there way. But LaCava does not let you say "I've been there" and she doesn not let you laugh. She wants to be "strange" and to describe a unique and unusual experience that is really anything but. Not only that, but she doesn't take you there with her either, she pushes you away and describes it to you from a distance.
The sections on her childhood in Paris, what tiny snippets we are allowed to read between the bloated, ridiculous footnotes, seem pretty typical to me, despite her repeated and repetitive insistance that she is "strange." Most people I know, myself included, had turbulent teenage years where they went through some dark shit. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of people. Yet the whole idea of the book seems to be that LaCava's turbulent teenage years are "crazy" in some special, elevated way. I can't help but wonder if this results from growing up filthy rich and not realizing that the rest of the world is actually just like you. To be fair, it does seem like LaCava is actually naive to the experience of the rest of the world. I don't think she would have written this book if she didn't truly believe she was very, very special. Ironically, if she realized she was not unique, I think she would have written a better book.
The extended pre-epilogue nature of the later sections, her big Return to France (she does realize some people never get to go to France, right? That some people can't afford to travel the world? Just wondering), seem to be mostly about how good she is at speaking French to taxi drivers. The fact that the book ends with her breaking away from her habit of eating only green beans to ordering a salad Nicoise is just a perfect way to sum up this ridiculous and self-absorbed memoir.
Also, just a side note, I found it hard not to barf around the 35th time she described herself as being thin and elf-like. For someone who is asking her readers for pity, she sure is full of herself.
If you want to glimpse into the fantastical world of the very rich and their completely out of touch worldviews, read this book. Otherwise, buy it and put it on your bookshelf for decoration, as it is very pretty.
jennyingeneral's review against another edition
1.0
I borrowed this from the library. It was a bit dull, but I did finish it. I rarely finish books that I'm not enjoying. It was a quiet short book, and passed some time peacefully but it wasn't particularly interesting.
stephanywrites's review against another edition
3.0
An odd book, for sure, but not a bad read. Very quick (finished it in a few hours) but I'm not sure what the plot was, or if any conflict was resolved. Not that every book needs a plot/conflict, but it was definitely an unusual book!
hannah_fox's review against another edition
1.0
I’d been looking for this book for a while because I remembered reading it but couldn’t find the title. In the process of searching (fruitlessly) for another book i came across advice to just google as many keywords about the book as you can remember so I decided to try that with this one and it worked. So the actual review - I hated this book. I loved the footnotes and illustrations; those are exactly the kind of features I enjoy in books. But the author was whiny and pretentious. More importantly, she glamorizes the depression and anorexia she dealt with as a teen and never resolves how she came to deal with them as an adult or if she even got better at all. It’s a completely irresponsible way to discuss mental illness. There is no further depth to the issue than, “boys didn’t like me so I ruined my life but now I’m a famous-ish fashion writer aren’t I cool” without analyzing why she felt that way and the culture of misogyny that creates these problems for teen girls. It is marketed towards adults but since the character is a teen it would likely be given to teens, as was the case for me - it did not affect me negatively as I was able to see the issues but many teens are susceptible to this kind of surface-level glamorization of mental illness. It’s disappointing because as I said the premise was intriguing - cataloging objects to tell the story of your life. But the story that was told was something the author probably still needed to be working on dealing with rather than throwing out into the hands of the public. To be fully clear, I am not saying it is irresponsible to write about mental illness. In fact, it’s very important to do so WELL. But this way of talking about it is dangerous.
unabridgedchick's review against another edition
4.0
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.
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.
guest54's review against another edition
2.0
ok so i really wanted to like this book. unfortunately, i just could not. i really tried to ignore the format of the footnotes and main text being cut off so flipping pages becomes extra complicated. if that was one of the main points of the book, could they not have spent some time thinking about the readability of this? secondly, i found the author to be increasingly unlikable. i don’t know. i feel bad shitting on somebody’s memoir, but i would not recommend this book to anyone.
emaks's review
4.0
Uprooted from her small New England town when her father’s work transferred him overseas, the author spent her teen years in a suburb of Paris. While there, her social awkwardness leads her to feel like an outsider even among the other expatriate Americans in her school. Already prone to bouts of worry and melancholy, her experiences eventually push her into depression. Chronicled in a series of vignettes centered around objects and facts, her way of escaping the world around her, LaCava recounts these struggles and how she drew strength from her creative, whimsical nature.
wildmonstergirl's review
1.0
Said nothing, went nowhere. This and Drew Barrymore's autobiography are the worst books I have read as of yet.