Waal, Edmund de: The White Road

Toller Druck

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.