A House of Paper Moths

A bookbinder’s apprentice discovers that the moths eating the library’s oldest folios are rewriting them. Strange, tender and very funny.

Cover of A House of Paper Moths by Celia Marr

Odile has spent four years learning to stitch signatures and pare leather when she notices that the library's oldest folios are changing. The moths that live in them are not eating the pages. They are editing them.

Marr plays the premise for comedy first, and the jokes are good, but the book slowly turns into a story about who gets to keep a record and who gets left out of it. I laughed a lot and cried once, on a bus.