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The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century Of Art And Loss (2010)

by Edmund de Waal(Favorite Author)

3.81 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0374105979 (ISBN13: 9780374105976)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

review 1: This is a fascinating well written family history using a collection of netsukes that author inherited to explore his family's history. Netsukes are intricate, miniature Japanese carvings used as toggles to attach objects to obis around men's kimonos. Edmund de Waal descended from prominent and wealthy Jewish Ephrussi family who became rich as grain merchants in Europe. With theacquisition of the netsuke from his great-great uncle in 1870 de Waal tells about the family's life and Paris and Vienna from 1870 through the upheaval of both world wars. It also goes up through the postwar Japan through the uncle's life there.I found the slow in the beginning, but it became more engrossing as the book progressed. The book also had excellent illustrations of many works of... more art that the family once owned. The end papers at both the front and end of book show close-up photos of about 60 netsukes in the author's collection. I would recommend this book to those who like history, and art.
review 2: This was a most unusual journey curated by an artist that is not only a skilled potter, but also a skilled writer of prose. It is the saga of a wealthy Jewish family told through the history of a Japanese netsuke collection. Edmund De Waal, with a gentle hand and endless curiosity meticulously researches his family's history from the Ukraine to Paris, Vienna, London, and finally Japan. This is not an historical treatise, but rather an artists' philosophical rumination of culture, family, and historical memoir. He himself is not sure what is he is writing, "...I sell Sasha why we've come, that I'm writing a book about - I stumble to a halt. I no longer know if this book is about my family, or memory, or myself, or is still a book about small Japanese things." less

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