Waal, Edmund de: The White Road

Die Papierqualität wirkt solide und das Layout ist für das Lesen angenehm. Der Abstand zwischen den Zeilen ist gut gewählt und die Lesbarkeit ist auch bei gedimmtem Licht akzeptabel.

I read “The White Road” immediately after “The Hare with Amber Eyes”, which in retrospect was a mistake.It’s not a bad book - in fact it’s a most unusual book. I can think of very little like it that I’ve read, apart from maybe Sebald. It’s a personal history of porcelain, but much more, too - a travelogue of discovery from Jingdezhen to Dresden to Cornwall, The Potteries, Dachau, South Carolina ... and I enjoy the fact that Edmund de Waal never dumbs down.Unfortunately, what was quirky and endearing as a writing style in “The Hare with Amber Eyes” becomes irritating in this book, in my opinion. There’s a lot of mixing of tenses, and flipping around between first, second and third person. The combination of second person and present tense when relating historical events is a style I found particularly annoying - rather like being dragged around one of those “experience”-type museums by an over-zealous guide in period costume. In combination with overuse of the possessive when it comes to historical characters (“my alchemist”, “my mathematician”, “my Quaker” ) it all feels rather self-indulgent.I did find enough to keep my interest, though and finish the book. And I do feel enlightened about many aspects of porcelain - but “The White Road” made for exhausting reading.