Friday, April 8, 2011

13 Rue Therese

This posting is not about a real place I have been to, but a place I have been transported to in my imagination. It is Paris, 1928.

I have just finished reading this book by Elena Mauli Shapiro called 13 Rue Therese. I have heard about this book from a review on The New Yorker a few months ago and have had been intrigued. 

What a wonderful journey she has taken me to. It is a fictionalized story of a real Parisian woman and her shoebox of memories. It is a life imagined from fragments of her mementos. 

The character reminds me a little bit of Anais Nin -- a seemingly very proper woman who definitely has a penchant for the wild side.