This book follows the thoughts, letters and life of Madame Rose as she hides out in the basement of the home she has loved and which she has been loved by, for most of her life. She is awaiting "the wrecking ball" and is determined to perish with the house, as the Emperor of France, Napoleon III is razing streets and entire neighborhoods in order to improve the infrastructure of the city. Through her memoir-filled and sometimes frantic writings, we learn about her life, her love, her family, her friends, and all that feeds her insistence that if the house goes, she goes with it. This struck me as a v-e-r-y slow-moving book, seemed plodding and repetitious at times. Her secret alluded to on the book flap was guess-able and woven into the book in a not very compelling way. What kept me reading, though, was that I could relate to the feelings she had of loving a home and all it held, because I felt the very same way about the house I grew up in. And because I like that books transport us to different places, different times, I had no objection to this escape to this new place for me - Paris in the 1860's.