Monday, September 17, 2012

The Hare with Amber Eyes


Bernardsville Library’s book group, Memoirs and Coffee, will discuss Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes on Tuesday, September 25, at 10:30 a.m. in the Community Room.  This book discussion group meets monthly and is open to new members who like to read memoirs and biographies.  The discussion is led by library staff member Pat Kennedy-Grant who has made extra copies of The Hare with Amber Eyes available at the circulation desk.
Edmund de Waal’s curiosity was piqued when he inherited a collection of netsuke, tiny Japanese carvings. What were they? How did they figure into his family’s history? He would come to learn that the netsuke were all that remained of his Viennese family’s vast art collections, destroyed in the Nazi persecution of Jews. Five generations of towering success and wealth for the Ephrussis family were stripped away in World War II, yet the netsuke had been miraculously saved by a maid who sewed them into a mattress. De Waal’s book, The Hare with Amber Eyes, explores family history under extraordinary conditions and the little miracles that endure such destruction.

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