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A review by tomleetang
The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal
4.0
The perfect model for reflective familial biography.
'My ancestor was a rich dude who knew a few famous artists and authors' hardly seems like a promising start, but de Waal has astutely positioned his biography at a crossroads of different themes. Art and aestheticism, yes, but also anti-Semitism in the years before the Dreyfus affair, through to the rise of Nazi Germany; a confrontation with orientalism, explored through lacquered boxes and the titular netsuke; social commentary on the belle epoque; the complicated process of reconstructing the past.
The writing is also nicely done, with flourishes of ornate prose and well-selected quotations sprinkled in just the right amount.
I wasn't surprised to read after finishing that some other historians have claimed the significance of the Ephrussi family is sometimes overstated in the Hare with the Amber Eyes, since there is an element of hagiography to this book, for all de Waal's pretence to objectivity. Still, it's a fascinating, well-constructed work.
'My ancestor was a rich dude who knew a few famous artists and authors' hardly seems like a promising start, but de Waal has astutely positioned his biography at a crossroads of different themes. Art and aestheticism, yes, but also anti-Semitism in the years before the Dreyfus affair, through to the rise of Nazi Germany; a confrontation with orientalism, explored through lacquered boxes and the titular netsuke; social commentary on the belle epoque; the complicated process of reconstructing the past.
The writing is also nicely done, with flourishes of ornate prose and well-selected quotations sprinkled in just the right amount.
I wasn't surprised to read after finishing that some other historians have claimed the significance of the Ephrussi family is sometimes overstated in the Hare with the Amber Eyes, since there is an element of hagiography to this book, for all de Waal's pretence to objectivity. Still, it's a fascinating, well-constructed work.