The Hare with the Amber Eyes

There is so much to say about this beguiling book by the potter, Edmund de Waal, that it is hard to know where to start other than it has taken me far too long to get around to reading it. When I mentioned it in January, Recommendations from the Costa, it was in the aftermath of the Costa biography award and it was in my mental filing cabinet as a biography of 264 netsuke (small Japanese carvings) and maybe that was a little off putting. In truth, though, it is a family memoir and the netsuke are the link to an exploration of several generations of the Ephrussi family. We follow the family from grain merchants in Odessa to wealthy bankers in Paris and Vienna; from Jewish assimilation to near obliteration; from escape from Austria to Tunbridge Wells of all places; from California to post-war Tokyo; from collectors, patrons and connoisseurs of art and literature in the late 1800s to Nazi ransacking and sequestering (and subsequent attempts at restitution after the war).

It is at once an art history book (just imagine being related to someone who was friends with Proust, Monet, Manet and Renoir), a short history of a Europe from about 1870 and a personal history of a family with an extraordinary tale to tell. The scale of the Ephrussis' wealth and influence was unimaginable (think Rothschild); the Palais Ephrussi in Vienna during the First World War plays out in parallel this autumn to Downton Abbey - although unlike the rather middlebrow Crawleys,  the Ephrussis' patronage, understanding and appreciation of art, music and literature shines through their family history. The accounts of the sacking, after the Anschluss in 1938, of the artistic treasures of the Palais Ephrussi by the Nazis, the expulsion of the family from their home and dreadful realisation that there is nothing for Viktor Ephrussi to do anymore (his business has been sequestered, he can't go to his cafe, the theatre or opera, his bookshop or barber, he cannot get on a tram or sit on a park bench) are amongst the most touching and poignant pages I have read.

Murakami in the news

So just as the book group decides, at last, to read a Haruki Murakami novel, he is all over the papers. According to Tuesday's edition of the i (my new favourite paper; what fantastic value for 20p), Murakami has developed from having a cult following to being a full-blown literary phenomenon. The piece focused on the release this week of his new book 1Q84 (an alternate 1984) which apparently required some retailers to have a Potteresque midnight opening. The i predicts superstar status in the UK.....so it is just as well we are reading one of his books now. He's obviously a sensible sort of chap as he is currently visiting writer at the University of Hawaii .......in a hammock with the laptop under a palm tree, writing to the music of crashing waves and exotic birdsong. How perfectly lovely.

A hesitant Mann Booker comment

With something approaching media saturation of the Mann Booker prize, I hesitate to join the debate about whether it has sold out, become too populist, is homophobic etc. However, prompted by the interview on Today this morning with Julian Barnes about his novel The Sense of an Ending (which I have not yet read), I now hope that he will win purely on the basis of this delicious interview. He was utterly charming (smooth, secret crush type, modest and completely lacking any pomposity) and very interesting about the process of writing...... the germination of an idea for a novel, the extent of planning, how long it is going to be and how long it will take to write, how to get to the end and whether you know what is going to happen. He discussed writing about death - not the process of dying, but death itself which he is drawn to because it is not talked about enough. In his view "an eternity of non-existence" has to be worth writing about. He explained that, having been shortlisted several times before, he feels that he has "exhausted the ins and outs" of not winning and "wouldn't object to a change". After this seductive interview, he has my vote.

PS: rant time - how on earth could Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child not make the shortlist? It is a remarkable book. Read it!

Home Improvement with Samuel Pepys

After 3 months of scaffolding, building and decorating works and the accompanying mess and disruption, I am feeling in need of a little perspective and where better to look for it than in Samuel Pepys' Diary. Here is the entry for 29 September 1660:  

All day at home to make an end of our dirty work of the plasterers, and indeed my kitchen is now so handsome that I did not repent of all the trouble that I have been put to, to have it done. 


This little gem comes from Pepys' Diary online from which I can also tell you that the average temperature for September 1660 was 13 degrees! There are apps for iPhone and iPad which enable to you to have a day by day connection with Pepys which is rather fun and much easier than attempting his diaries as a whole (although Claire Tomalin's biography is well worth reading). For completeness, last night (3 October 1660) Pepys "spent the evening looking upon the painters that are at work in my house". So did I.