The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss in Crazy Challenge Connection

May 01, 2015 Book Concierge rated it really liked it

Shelves: france, biography, family, audio, war, concierge, strong-women, world-war-ii, library, nonfiction

Book on CD read by Michael Maloney

When his great uncle Iggie died in 1994, Edmund de Waal inherited a collection of 264 netsuke. The tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings had long fascinated him and he wanted to know more about how they came to be in this collection. Thus began a search back through the archives of history, and family lore, to discover a family banking dynasty dating back to the nineteenth century in Paris and Vienna. At one time the family was every bit as prominent and wealthy ...more

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Jan 22, 2011 Charlotte (Buried in Books) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biography

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. April Book Club Read

I was looking forward to reading this book and it certainly didn't disappoint me. At the end of it I feel rather emotional. This is the story of a collection of 264 Netsuke (among them a Hare with Amber eyes), how they came into Edmund's family. But it's more that that - it's the story of a family, once fabulously wealthy. How they contributed to the cultural environment they lived in (commissioning works by Renoir for example). How they lost everything and were scattered aro April Book Club Read

I was looking forward to reading this book and it certainly didn't disappoint me. At the end of it I feel rather emotional. This is the story of a collection of 264 Netsuke (among them a Hare with Amber eyes), how they came into Edmund's family. But it's more that that - it's the story of a family, once fabulously wealthy. How they contributed to the cultural environment they lived in (commissioning works by Renoir for example). How they lost everything and were scattered around the world.

Last month's book for book club was The Glass Room, which I found rather cold. This book shares similar themes of Anti Semitism and War, as Edmund's family (the Ephrussi family) becomes targets of hatred in both Paris and Vienna. The story follows them through the end of the nineteenth century, then through the first and second world wars up to present day.

I was particularly touched by the story of his Great Grandparents, Viktor and Emmy, who receive the Netsuke as a wedding present from Viktors favourite Uncle (who originally bought the Netsuke into the family). Emmy clearly didn't marry for love, though she did have 4 children. I was incredibly moved by their story, the desparate attempt to leave Austria before the second world war. The author doesn't shy away from the difficult aspects of his family - how Viktor decided against transferring his considerable wealth to Switzerland with terrible results. Of Emmy's suicide, believing they would never escape from the Reich. How their maid squirrelled away the nesuke while the house was occupied by the Gestapo and hid them in the mattress of her bed. The netsuke are on the constant in the story.

It makes me realise how little I know about my own family. How the only thing I have of my Mothers Parents is a King James Bible that my mother found when clearing out their house a few years ago. Of a few photographs taken when they went on a cruise that finished in New York (some of the Twin Towers). My mother also came across photographs taken by my grandfather when he was stationed in India - photographs my mother wouldn't let me see, as some contained severed heads on pikes in the desert. How I never knew my Fathers Mother.

There are whole lifetimes that we know nothing about - so many missed chances to learn.

This book is beautiful written and an absolute joy to read. ...more

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Nov 24, 2012 mussolet rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: theme-history, country-france, city-paris, theme-art, country-japan, city-vienna, city-tokyo, language-english, 2021-sorted, 2024-shelf-challenge

You can tell that Edmund de Waal comes from an interesting background when you look at the family tree. Five generations back, Charles Ephrussi sent his children from their native Ukraine to Paris and Vienna, creating a successful bankier family business, even marrying one daughter off to a Rothchild.
The Parisian part of the family stayed in Paris - unlike the Viennese part, who were afflicted by the annex of Austria in 1938.
From his great uncle Iggie, who left Vienna behind and started a new li You can tell that Edmund de Waal comes from an interesting background when you look at the family tree. Five generations back, Charles Ephrussi sent his children from their native Ukraine to Paris and Vienna, creating a successful bankier family business, even marrying one daughter off to a Rothchild.
The Parisian part of the family stayed in Paris - unlike the Viennese part, who were afflicted by the annex of Austria in 1938.
From his great uncle Iggie, who left Vienna behind and started a new life in Tokyo, Edmund inherits 264 netsuke, intricate wood and ivory carvings traditionally used as balance weights for pouches attached to clothing.

Edmund, a ceramicist with a love for his art, sets out to track the netsuke' journey through 19th and 20th century Europe, and traces his family's journey alongside it.
He has a certain view of his work, which also influences his writing:

"Melancholy, I think, is a sort of default vagueness, a get-out clause, a smothering lack of focus. And this netsuke is a small, tough explosion of exactitude. It deserves this kind of exactitude in return."

This makes for difficult reading, at least for me. I genuinely have a hard time reading something that is not interested in story-telling, and this is one of those books. De Waal's descriptions are rich and vivid, but every now and again, some sentence will put me off and I will have a hard time getting into it again.

The history covered in this book is astounding. The Ephrussis were rich enough to be patrons, fall in with writers and artists, and collect great works of art. And they were Jewish enough to see the worst of the first half of the 20th century. Seeing how de Waal tries not to use melancholy, you tend to forget that this was something that happened to his family, and that he must be even more affected by what he discovers than the reader is. I could have done with a bit more emotion - not instead of the facts, but existing alongside them.
This is the reason for the missing star; it is however no reason for you not to read it.

There is also the fact that de Waal is not a writer - he is a ceramicist, and for all his lavish descriptions, especially of the feelings that touching the netsuke evokes in a person, this book could have done with a better editor. This book meanders at times, loses the sense of time, or moves in circles. This makes it difficult to read, and I would not advocate reading it in one sitting. Chapter by chapter, it would give you more enjoyment. And more to think about.

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Review also posted at 238 books in 238 days. ...more

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Jan 15, 2014 Carol rated it it was amazing

Shelves: art, netsuke, tiny-japanese-wood-and-ivory-carvin

Edmund de Waal wrote the biography of his family, and the "biography" of his collection. He states that it is a story of the ascent and decline of a Jewish dynasty; about loss and diaspora, and about the survival of objects. The book begins in Paris 1870 with art-critic Charles Ephrussi, then on to his great-grandmother in Vienna; and last, his great-grandmother's son, Ignace (whom he calls great-uncle Iggy) in Tokyo. de Waal is the 5th generation in his family to inherit this collection, and he ...more

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