Hare with Amber Eyes

Spotting Dovegreyreader's review of Milton Place by Elisabeth De Waal last week reminded me that I had a copy of The Hare With Amber Eyes, a family memoir witten by her grandson, Edmund, awaiting reading after I borrowed it from a friend. I remember my partner buying a new edition years ago, probably around the time of the paperback release, but my reading habits were quite different then and The Hare's synopsis didn't appeal so I never read it. Now, some eight years later, I loved being swept up into this beautiful history and I wonder whether I might also have enjoyed it back then or if this is a book which has to find its reader at the right moment in order to be fully appreciated. Certainly I have seen numerous reviews where readers gave up fairly early on, and probably an equal number where readers sere absolutely in raptures. I would describe The Hare With Amber Eyes as a Marmite book (love it or hate it!).

De Waal's idea to trace a century or so of his family's turbulent history through the ownership of a netsuke collection is inspired. I loved learning about the ancestor, Charles, who first bought them in Paris. Quite the artist's patron, Charles' friends included many prominent society figures and artists and I was delighted to rush to our (copy of!) Luncheon Of The Boating Party by Renoir where Charles is the top-hatted man in the background. I only really know Paris from literature but could picture the salons and parties, promenades through the park, and the wonderful life of this affluent family - until anti-Semitism flared in the wake of the Dreyfus affair.

The netsuke then went to Vienna, a city I visited in September 2017. De Waal's evocation of the family's Ringstrasse mansion brough back memories of our visit and we must have been driven past it during our tram tour. Vienna really does spring to life from the pages and I very much appreciated the intensity of De Waal's research. The Austrian branch of the Ephrussi family is as intent on making their permanent home in Austria as the Parisian Ephrussis were in France. Again they move in affluent circles with balls and parties and trips to the opera, until we get to the late 1930s and the Ephrussi is swiftly destroyed in a wave of disgusting nationalism as Hitler's Nazis annexe Austria. This part of the book is emotionally difficult to read and also depressingly relevant to today. The coldly calculated Nazi actions and manipulation of public opinion are chillingly similar to elements of How To Lose A Country by Ece Temelkuran. What I hadn't realised was how post-war Austria washed its hands of any responsibility and how hard Jewish families had to fight to regain even a tiny proportion of their confiscated property.

The Hare With Amber Eyes is a memoir about family, about twentieth century European history, and about art. It is also about concepts of home and exile, how where one grows up can be more influential on our sense of identity than where one's family originated. For the Ephrussis, their sense of their Odessa roots is gone within a generation as they embrace the cultures of France, Austria, Switzerland, England. But there is always a lingering shadow of other people's refusal to see past their own preconceived notions.

A cross between a biography of the Ephrussi family, and a history tracing the movements of 264 netsuke sculptures (including the title sculpture) from their initial acquisition in the late 1800s by Charles Ephrussi. The family's history is fascinating, once as wealthy and influential as the Rothschilds, painted by Renoir and acquainted with Proust, Monet, and others.

Through the family's story the author learns and recounts the history of the family in Europe and the growing anti-semitism leading to the loss of the family home, bank, and almost everything else during World War II. The netsuke collection is saved from the nazis by a family servant and returned to the family after the war until they eventually come into the possession of the author, a direct descendant.

Not necessarily a fast read, but a very remarkable story of a remarkable family and also a disturbing account on a personal level of how quickly anti-semitism turned into open persecution.