Tangents

I’ve just finished reading The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, a memoir that would be more. The book takes the survival through tumultuous times of a collection of Japanese netsuke as a thread to weave together the history of of de Waal’s family. Netsuke are small intricately carved objects, made in Japan for many centuries, depicting animals and people and used as toggles on pouches. The family, the Ephrussis, built a Jewish trading and banking dynasty from the grain markets of Ukraine to Paris and Vienna in the 19th century before two World Wars destroyed the world they knew. De Waal claims to have no intention of writing another memoir of loss, lingering morosely on the destruction. Instead he appears to want to nail down his facts and uses the material immediacy of the netsuke which he has inherited from his great uncle Ignace as a literal touchstone to return to repeatedly. His book centres their history in the possession of the family. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night at 9pm I sat on my bed and opened the first page of Man In The Dark, I put it down nearly three hours and two cups of tea later. A quick enough read so I thought I’d throw a quick review together.

I’ve read quite a few of Paul Auster’s books by now, though not his last two books, Travels in the Sciptorium and the Brooklyn Follies. So by point of comparison I have in the past really enjoyed Moon Palace,  his New York Trilogy and the more recent Oracle Night and The Book of Illusions. Man in the Dark probably won’t be sitting quite so high in my estimation . Read the rest of this entry »