13 Rue Thérèse, by Elena Mauli Shapiro

Odd little book. The author owns a collection of artifacts from a woman named Marie Brunet who lived in her apartment building 80 years ago. From those artifacts, she has created a story-inside-a-story of an American academic in Paris to do research who is gifted this box of artifacts by his charming and beautiful secretary. He becomes a bit mad about recreating the life of Marie Brunet, eventually becoming part of her life (i.e., going back in time). Interesting, charming--like the secretary--and offbeat.

On a Day Like This, by Peter Stamm

Hmmm, this book reminds me of The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, though the story is quite different. It's just about a very European and angsty man.

Beyond that, it's a story of coasting through life in an emotion-free zone until shocked out of it by the possibility of change and the discovery that everything that has happenend in the past decade has been a holding pattern. Oh, and it's about love. I think. And it takes place (mostly) in Paris.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick

This is a big, fancier-than-usual graphic novel. The drawings in the book--which is subtitled "a novel in words and pictures"--are phenomenal. The story is nice, though I could care less about French filmmaking history. Actually, scratch that: the story is trite and weird. It focuses on a young boy who lives in the walls of the Paris train station in the 1920s and keeps the clocks running. He is trying to repair a mechanical man he found. And that's the beginning of the story: it only gets stranger.

But the drawings are wonderful.

Murder on the Leviathan, by Boris Akunin

This was a bit of a strange duck. It's a locked-room mystery set on a ship ("Death on the Nile" anyone?), although the crime happened in Paris weeks earlier. It is told from the viewpoints of each of the characters, chapter by chapter (including one by the person who ends up being "It"). It features a bumbling inspector from Paris who is smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is. It is set in the 1870s, although it feels more like it should be set in the pre-World War I era (1910s). And the person who actually figures it all out? A stuttering Russian man who is apparently quite attractive to women while being completely a cold fish on the page.

Still, the whole set-up is an interesting concept. I may have to look into more by Akunin. I'm curious is this was an unusual set-up or if each of the books in the series are similar.

Good characterizations, but a bit "between the wars"-ish for me. If you love Dame Agatha, you'll like this.