lindsayharmon 's review for:

The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal

4.0

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I put this book on my to-read list after it appeared on a disproportionate number of "best of 2010" lists, but I wasn't really expecting to like it as much as I did. Part of the appeal is simply the fact that de Waal comes from a family of fascinating people who kept amazing company--Renoir and Proust, to name a few. But while the frame of the narrative is the journey of some family artifacts throughout history and the stories of the people who possessed them, de Waal (an artist himself) also explores the nature of art and collecting art, the history of antisemitism in France and Vienna, questions of national identity and why people choose to call certain places home, and so much more. And de Waal is a skilled and engaging writer, and not just "for a ceramicist" (a common phrase in the reviews I read).