I read this book partly in Calgary, Canada and partly in Nice, France. My boyfriend read it in French at the same time that I read it in English. I don't have time to write notes here, but I enjoyed the book a great deal. I found each generation's stories absorbing (often in a book that goes back and forth like this, you're interested in one set of stories more than the other and you ultimately only like half the book...). I enjoyed the theme of each object and each person being a fascinating story unto themselves, and embedded in that story are a thousand other stories of objects and people, all equally fasinating. Like this, life becomes a library of novels that share characters and themes. Plus, the book is funny.