An Extraordinary Theory of Objects: A Memoir of an Outsider in Paris
Displaced as a young teen to Parisfor her father’s job, LaCava collected peculiar objects for therapeutic comfort from the unhappiness she found there. If you take her at her word, her curious little book is based on her strangeness and odd habits, and she is exorcising any remaining demons by creating a written record of that difficult time. Interrupting the narrative—and her interruptions sometimes run half a page in length, with her clear intention to do so made obvious—are researched footnotes for the favorite precious objects that the author has encountered, outlining their history and lore: a kaleidoscope, a glass eyeball, a mushroom picked during a late-night walk. LaCava’s descriptions are well matched by Matthew Nelson’s delicate line drawings. In the end, what cleverly fills the honeycomb of LaCava’s own story—one that feels more special than upsetting for its strangeness—is a compassionate, evocative biography of seemingly aberrant things and a collection of historical anecdotes that most readers would never otherwise learn, let alone find gathered all together in one small (but not diminishing), deliberate, and careful book. --Annie Bostrom