The Hare With Amber Eyes
Edmund de Waal
After reading the first 20 pages of this novel I thought to myself how lucky to have come across this when looking for another title. And the remaining 331 pages didn’t disappoint. This is a wonderful novel. Writer Anita Brookner described The Hare With Amber Eyes as “the best book of the year’’. Frances Wilson told Sunday Times readers, “You have in your hands a masterpiece’’, while author Colm Toibin, in his review in The Irish Times, said it was “an exquisitely described search for a lost family and a lost time’’.
The back cover tells of how Edmund de Wall was entranced when he first encountered the collection of 264 Japanese wood and ivory carvings, (none of them bigger than a matchbox) in his great uncle Iggie’s Tokyo apartment. When he later inherited the ‘netsuke’, they unlocked a story far larger and more dramatic than he could ever have imagined.
De Waal’s journey to the past begins with “I want to know what the relationship has been between this object that I am rolling between my fingers, hard, tricky and Japanese, and where it has been.
Originally from Russia, the Ephrussi family became one of 19th-century Europe’s most successful and respected banking outfits. Charles Ephrussi, a cousin of de Waal’s grandfather, became an art writer, collector and frequent attendee of Parisian salons. In the 1870s Charles purchases 264 netsuke and a black-lacquered vitrine in which to store them, and they become a talking point of his respected art collection.
Charles is not immune to the increasingly menacing anti-Semitic mood starting to pervade French society. Prosperous Jewish banking families in particular become convenient targets for anger and hatred. This black cloud follows the netsuke to Vienna when they become Charles’ wedding gift to his cousin Viktor and his new wife Emmy.
De Waal’s handling of Hitler’s invasion of Austria in 1938 and its impact on the Ephrussi family may be viewed as yet another tragic Holocaust story in which property is confiscated, artworks are stolen, families are separated and Jews are murdered. De Waal’s forensic research, his artist’s skills of observation and empathy have ensured that we, too, are living the moment. The novel should be read for its exhaustive descriptions of interiors, whether bel époque Paris or Wiener Werkstatt Vienna; for its evocations of historical moments like fin de siecle France, or Austria at the time of its annexation by Hitler and his Nazis, or immediately post-war, bombed-out Tokyo; or for its compassionate portrayal of flawed and fascinating human characters.
No comments:
Post a Comment